slowly i become one with the mud
June was a month of rain, rain, rain, and more rain. I'm pretty sure there was some precipitation every single day. I looked up official numbers and it appears Pittsburgh got 7.35" rain total. That's a lot. On the upside, everything is growing like mad, I got to spend some time on indoor projects, and when I did do some outdoor work, the dirt was soft and very easy to dig. On the downside, I put off more things, and the lawn failed to get mowed a couple times. It's not scary yet, at least.
Of course, I leave town for 5 days and the forecast for the entire weekend is sunny and nice. Hmph.
Anyways, in plant news, the lilies are a sea of orange with a couple yellow specks here and there. The hostas have put up a couple flower stalks, which is excellent for being only their first year of transplant. The baby raspberry is also in its second year, is actually somewhat bush-like now, and has been giving me a good handful of ripe berries every day or few for the last couple weeks. Maybe next year I'll get enough to collect and do something other than stand there and snack on them. Coreopsis is a big bush of yellow faces.
In the garden, the mystery squash is the happiest I have ever grown squash, and is huge. I ended up trying to herd it out into the lawn, because it was shadowing too many nearby plants, although the peppers still seem pretty happy. I saw a couple bulbs growing so maybe next update I will be able to report what they are. Tomatoes have tiny green fruit, and I think I succeeded in only getting one cherry tomato plant. Apple trees are dropping applets like mad, and I need to go pick them up because they annoy me when they rot in places I want to walk. Blueberry bush has a tiny few unripe berries but almost none. I don't know what's up with that.
Things I have done:
Things to do:
Of course, I leave town for 5 days and the forecast for the entire weekend is sunny and nice. Hmph.
Anyways, in plant news, the lilies are a sea of orange with a couple yellow specks here and there. The hostas have put up a couple flower stalks, which is excellent for being only their first year of transplant. The baby raspberry is also in its second year, is actually somewhat bush-like now, and has been giving me a good handful of ripe berries every day or few for the last couple weeks. Maybe next year I'll get enough to collect and do something other than stand there and snack on them. Coreopsis is a big bush of yellow faces.
In the garden, the mystery squash is the happiest I have ever grown squash, and is huge. I ended up trying to herd it out into the lawn, because it was shadowing too many nearby plants, although the peppers still seem pretty happy. I saw a couple bulbs growing so maybe next update I will be able to report what they are. Tomatoes have tiny green fruit, and I think I succeeded in only getting one cherry tomato plant. Apple trees are dropping applets like mad, and I need to go pick them up because they annoy me when they rot in places I want to walk. Blueberry bush has a tiny few unripe berries but almost none. I don't know what's up with that.
Things I have done:
- Transplanted irises. The rain made the dirt nice and soft so digging up the irises as well as the row of grass/weed lawn where I wanted to put them was pretty easy. I now have a row of irises along the full length of the retaining wall, which looks nice and also should help make mowing the edge of the yard easier. As these things go, the irises multipled like fishes or loaves, and I ended up with a bucketful of extra rhizomes, which I've been distributing to friends. I love how easy it is to give plants away.
- Um. That was it. As I said, rain.
Things to do:
- Plant sidewalk. I am determined this will happen this year. Xuth and I did at least do more talking for it, made plans and are mostly in agreement of details, and I think now just need to a) acquire materials, b) set aside a weekend, and c) do it.
- Dig out some more drainage for the shed pavers? One effect of so much rain is I got to observe how well the shed paver project succeeded in providing adequate drainage, and I'm not sure. It definitely puddles there while it's raining, which is not surprising considering how much lower that spot is than surrounding yard, but the puddles go away fairly quickly when it stops, which I think means it's decent. But I think I could reduce the puddling even more by giving it a little extra space of rocks or a tiny ditch around it. I may wait on this until I see how it fares over the winter.
- Turn compost, continue weeding things, plant edible things in the space left now that the expanding iris patch is shrunk, and hopefully soon, harvest food things.