Thursday morning I was up at 5:45AM, which seems to be the new getting up time. I started editing the 54 photos “some idiot” had taken the day before. But I didn’t get very far before I had to stop just before 7AM to get ready to go pick basil for pesto.
I’d filled one big bowl heaping and was just starting the 2nd when my brother came out so we could go get his car. But the mechanic forgot to put the keys in it, so that was a wasted trip.
I finished picking about 8:30AM and went in and got the kitchen cleaned up and got ready to start cleaning the basil. I’d be looking for bugs and also for the leaves that had gone yellow from the 46F temps a few nights before.
There were all too many of both but I did fill my biggest bowl in the end. Then I started washing it and my helper friend arrived a half hour early at 11:30AM. So we started setting up to make pesto.
We got 4½ pints for the freezer and finished about 2PM.
I got the kitchen cleaned up and then looked for something else for my helper to do.
We’d used up most of my dried rosemary so we went to the garden to cut some to dehydrate. For some reason, 2 of the 4 plants there seemed to be dying from the bottom up. So I cut the tops off those 2 as they were still in good shape. I hope at least 1 of the other 2 survives as I hope to bring it inside in a few weeks.
My brother came home and again wanted to go get his car. So we headed out the back way on the dirt road. In the way back in, he found this snake stretched across the road, so we stopped and he took this photo. I tried to get it out of the road so it wouldn’t get flat, but it just coiled up. So I found a big stick and lifted it to the side.
We headed on our way, and within a hundred feet or so, a huge horse trailer passed us. I was glad we’d gotten it out of the road! Google says it’s a common water snake. We used to have a big one that lived in the woodshed for a few years.
While my helper friend worked on the rosemary, I finally was able to get back to my post. I finished it about 3:30PM.
In the meantime, he’d finished the rosemary so he headed to the Big garden to do some weeding. He got the rest of the walkway done.
Then he got the nasturtiums off the leeks. They had killed 1 leek already.
Then he pulled the stuff gone to seed out of the 2 mesclun beds. Pretty much all that’s left in them are the different types of kale. He left at 4:30PM and I just sat down to rest for a while.
Looking west up the driveway, still looks like summer…
On Friday he will be back at 8AM and I will finish up the Big garden. He has the foliar spraying to do. I think after that we will go to the new cellar and clean it up and find a place for the square stones to be stored.