George Shirley wrote:
....
We're expecting 84F by afternoon today and then the rain starts again.
Hot, humid, sweaty.

yeah, we've had plenty of rain the past few
days. no warmth yet. average is supposed to be
65F or so, but we'll hit that only twice this
week.

and have captured raccoons and a possum in
the live trap.


Harvested about a dozen sweet chiles this morning, Mostly from the Gypsy
we planted in February last year, it survived our mild winter, we pruned
it back earlier this year and it is really producing. The Swiss chard
from last year is still going strong so there's lots of chard for
cooking and salads.

other than green garlic and onions there's nothing
out in the gardens besides flowers.

we've been moving cedar trees (before the rains came
along) to fill in along a tree line that is thinning out
at the bottom (pine trees). have a few more to go.

way back when we were first putting trees along the
edge they ran anywhere from $5-$25 depending upon the
size. we've already given away about 20 trees from
our tree nursery and have moved 10 of them.

the downside to cedar trees is that the deer will eat
them if the winter gets bad enough.


Unfortunately the mosquitoes are out and about, I get hit about three
times in 20 minutes in the garden. Haven't seen any swallows, red winged
blackbirds, purple martins, etc. for a couple of days. They must be
holed up somewhere waiting for better weather.

mosquitoes haven't shown up in force here yet, they
are usually out in the early morning and evening and
since i don't tend to be gardening at those times i
don't get bit that much. after a really wet spell we'll
have some midday mosquitoes later in the summer. those
can be annoy as i'll spend more time swatting at them
than getting stuff done.

the regular early season birds are here. the later
season ones come along in a few more weeks. we know
warm weather has officially arrived when the goldfinches
and bluebirds come around. i always like watching the
purple martins come through on their rounds. we usually
have a pretty healthy population of bugs/bees with all
these flowers.


songbird