Post writing supervisor
On Friday morning, I was awakened at 4AM by a furball on my bed. Mind you, I had just put up the screen door, and it still had the cookie sheet. Because of the weight of the cookie sheet, the door would not stay shut, swinging open the instant it was released. So when I went to bed at 9PM, I KNOW I hooked it on the inside.
With the cookie sheet still on it, there’s no way he banged on it to open it without me being woken up. So how did the door open? Well, I tend to chalk it up with the other unexplainable events over the last 6 years.
So I tossed him out and hooked the door and tried to go back to sleep. I gave up around 5:30AM. I got up and got my post up. Next I tightened the hook on the screen door. Then I did the milk order. I found a message that the service for my husband’s cell phone hadn’t been paid even though I had put the new credit card number on. So I had to go through the rigmarole of getting that sorted. One fire out.
The plant lights on the back porch were on when I was awoken at 4AM. (I had just checked them the day before…) So I went around and made sure they were all set correctly. Second fire out.
I went out to get started on the gardens and discovered I’d managed to bend the blade on my new anvil cutters so I had to fix that. I spent about ½ hr on it. Third fire out.
I try to remember to take before photos and I got side tracked because so many things had burst due to the high heat on Thursday. I ended up taking about 90 photos…
MacIntosh comfrey, before
I finally got started on the comfrey at 9AM and got it cleaned out and put FlowerTone on it. It has buds from the heat. I forgot the after photo.
I started East lilacs at 10AM. They hadn’t been pruned last year so it kept me busy. I got the wood chip mulch raked back around them and cleaned up. It had started to drizzle so I quickly got my photos and notes and went inside around 11:30AM.
Last year I had gotten a catalog from a new-to-me company and ordered 2 plants: lemon verbena and ‘Attar of Rose’ geranium. They arrived and I got 2 lemon verbena. I didn’t mind having 2, but I really wanted the geranium as mine of nearly 20 years had died last year. So I had to deal with that. Fourth fire contained.
With the windows open I kept hearing what I thought was birds in the gutters. When I went outside, I discovered starlings had managed to get under the soffit and were building a nest.
So I called the contractor and asked if he could come fix the soffit sooner than later. He called around noon and said he’d come but it would be in the evening. Fifth fire contained.
My #3 helper arrived at 12:30PM and we went to the cellar to fill the quart jars for the foliar feeding. We were moving 20 or so trays to the cold frame, and they all needed fed.
Then we took a tray out and I showed her how to level the trays so when they are watered from the bottom, the food stays in the tray. I’ve quite a collection of sticks and stones for this purpose. She did a really good job.
So next we had to get the hot water hose out and turn on the hot water to the outside. I temper the water temperature for the seedlings as they’ve had enough of a shock going outside.
Once the hose was hooked up and the hot water made it to the end of the hose, I showed her how to mix up 5 gallon pails of food and how to administer it to the trays.
When she had finished feeding them, I was heading to the house so I said I’d shut off the hot water. Neither of us had touched it since turning it on. She’d filled 3 – 5 of the 5 gallon buckets. But when I got there, it was off… I double checked, but yup, it WAS off…
Well, that was the 2nd unexplained thing of the day. I think someone was messing with me, as he does periodically…
While she had been moving seedlings and so forth, I had been giving both mesclun trays a hair cut before they went out to the cold frame.
About this time, my son left to walk to work and went passed the new house on our road. He sent me the photo of the scrap pile. It was perfect for kindling, which I am in dire need of. So I messaged my #1 intern to ask if she could get the wood with me in the truck. She said she could. Sixth fire contained.
My brother came home and I was talking with him about 6:45PM and my #1 intern hadn’t come home. I mentioned I was waiting for her to get the wood. He said he’d go with me to get it. So he went up to get the truck, and I spent the time I was waiting to deadhead the daffodils. Both south gardens had the early ones that had gone by in the heat.
As I was tossing the deadheads in the bushes, I looked up to see why my brother hadn’t come yet. The truck hood was up and his car was butted up to it. So I walked up because he probably needed me to start the truck while he revved up his little car. So we did that and got it started. Seventh fire out.
The pile didn’t look that big but it filled the bed of the full sized truck and was heaped high. We brought it around by the bulkhead behind the house and managed to get my raggedy tarp on it so it would blow off. Eighth fire out.
While we were messing around with the tarp and baling twine, my contractor arrived and pulled the nest out. I didn’t get a photo. Then he managed to get the corner firmly in place, but right next to it the soffit could easily be lifted up 4” – 5”. He tried to use wire to make it stay down, but it didn’t hold. He asked for duct tape and I still had a roll of white from fixing the window shades, so he taped it down as far up as he could reach. Ninth fire out.
By the time he left it was 8PM. (Remember my day had started at 4AM…) I made some supper and sat down for a while. But my left hip starting really hurting. I took some meds, but it didn’t help. I got the dishwasher loaded so I’d not have to do it in the morning. I took a heavy duty muscle relaxer and it finally kicked in around 11PM.
One heck of a long day and I had 20 trays of seedlings to start on Saturday.
