7-08-07

Fruits of my labor:
So, we've gotten a few cayennes (probably 5 or so, but there are more on the way), a handful of Lima beans (not enough serve though), and a tomato (and 2 more close to ripe)...so far, I think the cayennes are a keeper. The tomatoes just don't do as well as I like. and it seems like some animal goes about digging up the Lima beans.

the cantaloupe in the back yard has taken off, and a few of the basil seeds I planted came up, but they're funny looking plants compared to last year's basil. And I noticed today that one of the reseeded basils came up too.

Herbs:
last weekend we got a letter from our Home Owners Association (which is only funny because we don't have any associated fees for said home owners association, and there's no covenants or anything) stating that we needed to mow and trim our lawn. This of course spawned quite the strongly worded letter from Shawn, but it also got me off my lazy ass to go out and rip up all the plants that were dead or i didn't like. So, I cut one of the reseeded parsley plants out front down to the ground. Then I dried the leaves. Now I got 2 sandwich baggies full of parsley.

So, my suggestion if you're going to grow any sort of herbs is to invest in a dehydrator. Mostly because you'll need it. Plus, they're great.

Mulching/Composting:
We went and bought a chipper from Harbor Freight on Saturday. This was so we could finally chip up all the branches from last year we cut off of our trees, plus the new pile of branches Shawn cut off the trees this year. We spent 4 hours chipping and sorting. Yes, we put the branches in the chipper, but the chipper doesn't exactly do much to leaves so we had to sort through all the detritus to pull out the large chunks of leaves so we could use the wood chips as mulch cover in the garden and out front. All I really have to say is that my legs hurt. well, after 4 hours of squatting I bet your legs would hurt too!

Rain/Watering:
Austin has gotten a large amount of rain over the last couple of weeks (this is the year that Marble Falls got 19" of rain in 6 hours--Lake Travis crested at 701 msl, and the LCRA thinks they'll have to have floodgates open until August). It started when Dani came to town on June 20th, and yesterday was the first day it hasn't rained. I ended up watering some newly transplanted plants (just to keep them from dying), but other than that, I haven't watered anything. Every time I've gone to look at the little rain gauge, it's always had at least half an inch of water in it (and I check the thing about once a day).