Monday, August 31, 2009, 21:53
Savor the Moment
It is with a feeling of regret that I realize the days are already becoming much shorter here at Rural Route 2. At the end of June and early July, the sun is setting after 9 p.m. and there is still light in the sky to the west after 10 p.m.
But August marks the month when the days become dramatically shorter and we lose quite a lot of daylight. And that means summer is coming to an end. Except this year, it has been so cool, it doesn't feel like we've had any summer. It has felt like fall much of the time since May. Except during the two local 4-H fairs, when the temperatures were in the 90s with high dewpoints and high humidity. I would come home from taking pictures feeling as if I had been dragged through a knothole backwards, as my mother used to say.
One positive aspect of summer coming to an end is that I've got beets! I pulled most of them last weekend, cooked them and froze them. I WAS going to make pickled beets but discovered that I was out of quart jars. But, not to worry. I left some of the smaller beets in the garden to grow a little more, and now I have bought more quart jars, so I will be able to have my pickled beets after all. My beets last year were somewhat of a disaster -- only about the size of walnuts in the shell.
My cabbage plants have grown at a good clip, too. The plants are so lovely and large, it seems almost a shame to cut the cabbage heads. I have harvested one and made pickled cabbage. I am going to freeze the rest when they are ready to cut.
But even though I am delighted with the beets and the cabbage, the victory of their growth is somewhat bittersweet. I am savoring the evenings when there is still light in the sky at 8 p.m. because I know that in just a few months, it will be getting dark by 5 p.m.
The animals are enjoying the cool evenings too. One day when I took the camera out, my orange tom cat, Gilligan, was enjoying the rock table. It holds the heat of the sun for a long time in the evening.
Isabelle was enjoying herself, too, taking the opportunity to nibble some grass in her training pen. We get precious little time to work together in the training pen, so she might as well have some time to enjoy what horses love to do.
Pixie was enjoying a romp around the yard as well, although she managed to sit long enough to get her picture taken. She can't romp too much because the arthritis in her right leg has been bothering her lately. Still, she does not let that ruin a stroll around the yard to see what Randy and I are doing.
And then there are the volunteer sunflowers that seem to sprout up frequently from the bird seed I put out in the winter. I have about a half a dozen in the tomato bed, and the honey bees have been busy collecting pollen from the golden sunflowers. I should probably pull the plants out when they first start growing, but I don't have the heart because I know the honey bees enjoy them, and later on, the chickadees will come to hang upside down to get the sunflower seeds.
The morning glories are finally blooming quite nicely as well. Early in the morning, when they are still in deep shade, it looks as though they are lit from within.
If the shorter days were not enough to tell me that fall is on its way, the sunset would. In the fall, the sunset often looks as though the angels had taken their paint brushes and painted the sky.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, August 29, 2009, 16:24
Call It What You Want -- I Say Pigweed
I've always found it interesting that the old-timers call it pigweed, but the fancy name for it is lambs quarters.
Lambs are little cute, white, dainty, curly things, sometimes with black faces, that cavort around the ewes, playing and chasing each other. They are sweet and adorable and cute as a bug's ear, if you could see a bug's ear.
There is nothing dainty, cute, sweet or adorable about pigweed. The stuff gets a toehold, and sometimes it even doesn't need much of a toehold at all, maybe just a toenail hold, and away it goes. Lush, dark, green, tall, sometimes four or five feet tall, imposing and intent on choking out everything that is trying to grow around it. Why would you want to associate that with something as sweet and innocent as a lamb?
No, I say pigweed is a more appropriate name.
Of course, it does not improve my impression of it that I am allergic to it. Not as allergic as I am to ragweed, but still allergic.
There are parts of Isabelle's pasture, because of the drought conditions, that are nothing but pigweed and ragweed. I only have to walk out there briefly, as I did Saturday morning, and my rubber chore boots are covered with yellow pollen. Mostly ragweed pollen, I think. But still. And when I came out of the pasture, my mouth burned as if I had been red pepper. But no red pepper. Just pigweed and ragweed.
The grass where Isabelle leaves her piles is thick and green and growing like gangbusters, in spite of the long-term drought. But the places where she thought the grass was acceptable no longer has any grass, just ragweed and pigweed.
Next spring, I am going to get some pasture mix and will try broadcast seeding. I know it won't germinate particularly well, but anything growing there besides pigweed and ragweed will be an improvement.
A very hard freeze would bring an improvement, too, in getting rid of the pigweed and ragweed this fall. But I'm not ready for a hard freeze yet. And neither is my garden.
We planted half of the garden this year to oats because I did not want to watch all of my garden plants wither and die in the drought. The oats came. But so did the pigweed. There was pigweed out there as tall as me. Last weekend, Randy went out with the weed whip and chopped down all of the oats and the pigweed. When the oats and pigweed have had a chance to dry, I will rake it up and we can burn it for bio-char for the garden.
Putting the pigweed back into the soil, to nourish as bio-char, seems only fair, if you ask me. Anything that grows that well with little moisture and no encouragement has to be good for something. And that's a one way to make use of it.
LeAnn R. Ralph