What Do Wasps And Hot Peppers Have In Common?

Welcome back!

I hope you've had a productive and peaceful couple of weeks. It's hard to believe that we're already zipping through the first week of August. Pretty soon my youngest will be getting back on the school bus and the day-to-day focus will change. But for now, we enjoy the nights we can stay up a little later.

There's been a lot of activity around our house lately, most of it can't be witnessed in the normal way. I go out back to the garden every morning to check on things, and I might notice a large cucumber that didn't seem to be there the day before. Or the tomato that has quite suddenly turned red. This past week, while taking out one of the rare weeds in my garden, I glanced up at the back of the house to notice a grey paper wasp nest under the eaves.

I was not impressed.
Because it hangs over the stairs to the basement (my only access to the basement where we do laundry), I was even less impressed than you'd expect.
After a couple of days, a can of wasp spray was located, and I waited until full-on dark to spray the nest as best I could from the ground. It was quite nerve-wracking, but for two days, I was relieved to not see any waspish activity. Until yesterday.

So another can was purchased, and this time the woman I rent the house from climbed up on a step ladder for a better shot and sprayed the hell out of the nest. Also at full dark. Let me just add in here that I think RAID wasp spray might be my favorite wasp killer on the market right now. Normally, I try and have a live and let live attitude, except for rodents. And wasps. Neither has any place in or on my home.

The garden seems to be settling into the maturation phase. The tomatoes are all in various stages of girth-building and reddening.

I'm confident we'll have lots to can, although I think we'll be doing them all up in small batches. More on that later. My two blueberry plants started to fruit before I could plant them back in the spring, so they've been living in the containers they came home in. I'm happy to report we got about twenty fat, tasty, dark blue berries from them! The last three were snacked on just yesterday. I think it's safe to plant them into their containers now. They're not headed for the garden because I want to be able to control how they over-winter and how their soil is managed. So for this year, and next, they'll live in planters.

The two hot pepper plants have exploded with peppers.

I didn't expect much from them initially, so it's safe to say I'm quite pleased with them. The bell peppers...nothing. They have the beginnings of flowers, wonderful leaves, but nothing else. The kale has been eaten down to the stem by something that has proven to be elusive, although I know there's no slugs in the garden. Out of the five plants I put in, only one looks like it might possibly live to mature. Disappointing for obvious reasons, but I was really looking forward to making my own kale chips this fall. The cucumbers are in various stages of maturation as well. There is one that I really should harvest it's getting rather large.


 The rest of the cucumber and the zucchini are all following the large one's example. My compost bin is coming along nicely too. I worried I was overloading it with scraps and peelings, but I've also added (mostly) dry grass clippings and leaves last fall. I haven't had to stir the things yet, the layers seem to be doing pretty well so far. There's no obnoxious smell, and as I understand it, that's a good sign.

Harley (our German Shepherd cross) and I saw a yearling black bear just the other morning not more than 50 feet from our house. He was coming up from the pond, and seemed as startled to see us as we were to see him. He took off and we headed rather briskly back to the house in case he was younger than I assumed and still hanging out with his mother. We haven't seen him before, so I think he was just traveling through and got thirsty. I've kept a close eye on the compost bin and my garden. Neither has been touched. an acquaintance down the road reports his compost bin was turned over, and I wonder if it's the same bear looking to fatten up as our days get shorter. The white-tailed deer I saw before with her then brand new fawn hasn't made an appearance lately and I can't help but wonder if they were only resting in the area until the fawn grew strong enough to relocate to a less populated area. I haven't seen the rabbits lately either. I got used to watching them watch us every time I took the dog out. I'd love to see an increased owl and hawk population, but not at their expense.

My "little" update has grown a fair bit longer than I intended. I'll set this aside for now and go see if the fog has burned off enough for me to get a few photos out in the garden.

Do you have a garden? Do you have a collection of herbs on the windowsill?

Moose, Lettuce and Spinach, Oh My!

I've written before on how relieved I am that spring is finally here, as evidenced by the warmer temperatures, more birds and the moose coming out of the bush.
Speaking of moose, a friend of mine (Sara Mealey) got some great photos of that same moose I shared with you the other day.
Apparently the moose likes paparazzi. Or should that be people-razzi?

I tell you, spring couldn't get here fast enough for me. 
Okay, I should amend that...
I want spring, but I really don't want it to arrive with a body slam that will flood my little town. I mean, let's be reasonable, very few of us are ready to be cut off from our main city an hour away.
I know we aren't.

We've started our plants with lettuce and spinach first. I'm very pleased with how they're thriving in their little south-facing window.

On the left is Buttercrunch lettuce and on the right, though looking less vigorous, is spinach.


It's not a huge start, but it is a start. This morning I started some more lettuce and spinach, because, hey, we'll want more. I also started some basil.

So why do all this when I can get it in town? 

• Because veggies aren't cheap, and neither is the gas required to get them
• Because nothing beats the taste of homegrown veggies and spices
• Because it satisfies my green thumb and there is an undercurrent of hope in growing things yourself

What about you? Are you growing anything at home, whatever form that takes?

It Is The Age of Doing

I read a lot of blogs, but the ones that I tend to return to  time and again are the ones the authors try and live their truth. They DO.  There is much merit in ideas and theories but after a time, we have to get off our behinds and do something with those ideas. Whether it's to "beat the rush and collapse now" as the ArchDruid suggests or to start preserving, recycling and de-cluttering, we need to stop talking about it and start doing.
We here are following my own advice. We are de-cluttering, even though it's frightening, enlightening and blatantly shocking sometimes. (Note to self: de-clutter more often than once every dozen years)
When I first started planning on growing our own food, I learned all I could about season extension. But as I've been comparing the overall weather and temperature of the new homestead to where we live now, I find that I've neglected a very important factor in food production. Drought.

drought |drout|
noun
a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall; a shortage of water resulting from this.
• [usu. with adj. ] figurative a prolonged absence of something specified : he ended a five-game hitting drought.
• archaic thirst.

One of the ways we'll be dealing with drought is to store water in rain barrels. Over time, my Dad has been gathering the barrels and spouts, next comes the gutters and downspouts and screens to keep out bugs and other nasties. I'll be developing raised beds in which to grow our vegetables, instead of the traditional rows, because this will allow me to grow more intensively, rotate crops, grow green manure crops, grow sprouts for the chickens and even put a temporary chicken pen over temporarily fallow beds. I'll be able to cover the beds in case of frost, marauding birds or excessive sun, as well as keep out the friendly rabbit.

An important element of any homestead, I'm learning, is drainage,  whether it be in the garden or the septic leach field. I mention this because last week, I had an epiphany. The last time I lived on our mini-homestead, I didn't need to worry about the infrastructure of our place, my parents worried about that. But life has changed us and our circumstances. Now I need to know how well our land drains. I need to learn how the septic system works, where it is and how to manage it. I need to learn not only about this but about so many other things, and then I need to make the management of the homestead a working part of every day, while I learn about all the other things I haven't realized that I don't know yet.
I need to learn, to do. I need to do what it takes to build on what is there, do what it takes to build our success year after year, and teach others by demonstration, on both my You Tube channel and this blog and my freelance writing.

Indeed, it falls to each one of us to learn how to survive the coming decline of our economies as well as society. It is the responsibility of each of us to learn how to lives with less, do more with what we have and pass on our knowledge of these things. In this way lies our best hope.

It is time to do something.
What will you do?