Rainy Sunday

It rained all morning here so I had to hold off on my plans to mow the lawn.  I finally got that accomplished at 4 PM.  I’m sitting here watching a recording from my video security camera that sees my neighbor’s driveway.  They had a couple of cases of beer and a big cut of ribs plus a gas can and cooler and a ham.

If the stuff was stolen in daylight my camera would likely see them but at night it’s only good for my driveway.  So far I’ve seen nothing.  We do have a nice quiet neighborhood, however.  Not a lot goes on out there all day.

We’ve had lots of rain this past week- enough to cause the tomatoes to swell and split.  Once they split the bugs have an easy shot at the insides so I have to pick even the almost ripe ones if they split.

I had the peak harvest this week.  I posted a picture on Facebook and I’ll post it here along with a few others.

the cherry tomatoes came in great this year and they are sweet!

I’ve got more eggplant than I can handle and they just keep coming.

I finally got more than a handful  of blueberries this year and they are also wonderfully sweet.  The blackberries have produced even more than last year and I get about a pint of them every few days.

I found that my lawn pump had quit on me while we were in Jacksonville.  I replaced the pump relay and that seemed to solve the problem-for only a few days.  The pump quit again yesterday and I once again found the relay as the problem.  I went to Ace and got a more substantial relay and soldered the connections to assure good contact.  The pump is working again and hopefully will stay that way.

The loss of the pump resulted in my losing my cucumber and squash plants.  The cucumbers may revive some, the squash are gone.

Penny had oral surgery on Wednesday and can’t eat anything but soft food.  She can’t eat any of the garden stuff.  It’s a shame because she really like blackberries and home grown tomatoes.  The surgery and related medication has made her fairly miserable but she seems to be healing OK.

Home and Garden

I’m back home after 10 days in Jax and found that my garden mostly survived the lack of attention.  Apparently my pump quit pumping I would guess for the last 2-4 days.  All the plants that did not have reservoir containers dried up .  So my cucumbers and squash are gone.  Now I have to figure out what’s up with the pump.

Here’s what the garden looks like:

It looks like a jungle!

I picked  many Japanese Eggplant, lots of blackberries and cherry tomatoes and some full sized tomatoes.  Only 2 tomatoes and a few blackberries got over ripe while we were gone.

I’ll be eating lots of blackberries and tomatoes this week.

An eggplant looks like a porpoise.

A tomato has a nose

On another note both outside cats were here when we arrived.  They conned me out of 2 cans of food in one sitting. Buzz did look a little skinny

This week my main job will be taking care of Penny.  She has some oral surgery that is going to make her uncomfortable and put her on a restricted diet.  Wish her luck that all goes well.

Quick Run Down

This past week has been occupied with things needing to be done and very little recreation

The garden is producing more each day.  I’ve had lots of cucumbers and peppers.  The squash came in good and then the hot weather slowed it down.  Japanese eggplant are going gangbusters  Tomatoes are just starting.  I’ve picked about 10 so far.

I spent all day Sunday enclosing my tomatoes, blackberries and blueberries in bird netting.  A female cardinal watched me do the work looking for a way to snatch some berries before they were locked up.

Each morning and evening I continue to feed the outside cats.  They have become quite relaxed with me and have been hanging around the yard all day.  They don’t disappear when we go out of town now –they just are hungrier for the canned food when I show up.  The feeder has been working now for more than a year with no adjustments or problems.  I finally got the design perfected.  It will feed for about a whole month without refilling.

Once again this year a turtle has been showing up in the morning to clean up any scraps of soft cat food and eat some dry stuff too.

Yesterday When I went out there were 2 turtles – 1 big one and 1 smaller one.

Our sago palm in the front yard has decided to put out a new set of fronds.

Penny is working on a quilt for Oklahoma.

 

see Penny work.

Today we had home-grown berries for our 10 o’clock snack.

We will be going out of town again soon – I expect to come back to some very ripe tomatoes and berries.