Harvest Monday; August 1, 2016

Visit Our Happy Acres to see everyone's Harvest Monday.
I can honestly say I visited the garden once this week. Just been a busy week for this family. Working out of town, wife was not feeling well, hot, and our oldest just bought his first house. And with that last one we spent the weekend working on his house. There was a back outside room on the house that had leaked and literally destroyed the wood. So we tore into that Saturday and finished Sunday. It was a lot of work and really miserable outside with heat indexes of 107. But it was done. He and his girlfriend are repainting and refinishing a few hardwood floors. My FiL and youngest son tore out all of the bushes in front of the house Sunday too. Luckily the house came with a new roof, HVAC unit, carpet, and hot water heater. It's a lot of work but I know they can do it. Even his Mom came and painted Sunday. And she hates painting.
OK, finishing this up at lunch today as I was beat last night. That heat really takes it out of me anymore and I really didn't want to do too much. After I got back from his house, we lounged a while as the thunderstorm took our power out for a while (always does), ate some salad, then proceeded to sweep more on the &*#! pool. Third time this year adding flocculate to it. The weather has been hard on it and everyone else's too. Got to finish sweeping it tonight (hopefully.) If it rains I'll go to the gym instead. Leg day and not really digging that!
I took a few pictures of the garden this morning before I left for work. What a mess I have in front of me. Most of the tomato plants have given up, weeds need pulled, I still haven't sowed the second bean crop or lettuce, turnips, radishes, etc.

At least the Morning Glories liked the downpour last night.

As it was this morning. Plenty of red tomatoes left!

Here's this weeks spreadsheet. Notice I caught up last week but since I didn't pick anything except a few small items I didn't put anything in for this week. 

And the construction photos. 

It doesn't look like a lot of work there but trust me it was. No WOF of the Week this week. Sorry. Good luck to everyone and their harvests. Don't be like me. 

Almost Ready

I have been playing around with the new website's software and learning (albeit slowly) what I can and how to work things. I don't remember it being this hard to learn new things. Hopefully I'll have everything up and running smoothly in a few days. Small additions after that. Hardest part was settling on a theme and I'm not 100% sure on the one I picked. I'll keep looking.

Memorial Day weekend for everyone here in the USA. We certainly are thankful for what we have and try to say thanks, not just on this day but on every day that we can. Amy even decorated the yard up some. She's definitely more military- geared than I am.

It seemed like I spent most of my time working everywhere I could. I spent a lot of time working in the garden; weeding, cutting, trimming, more effing weeding, replanting (lost a tomato to something), mulching, fertilizing (10-10-10 is my choice.) I tilled around the potatoes, bush beans, and corn to weed them out some, hilled the potatoes some more, and soaked everything good. Surprisingly the corn has made an appearance and seems to be doing well.

I got the fence run between the boards for the beans to climb. But I now have Bean Beetles.

Yes I spilled the beans! Bag came open and poured out. I am too lazy to pick up all of the bean seed thinking that nothing would happen. 

I did put up fencing for these peas yesterday. 

I spent a little bit this weekend and got a daylily for my garden. Love me some daylilies. 

Even the one in the front bed just started blooming out. 

Well, a quick post at lunch. Do more later as the dogs and I will be hidden in the bedroom while The Wife hosts a party for something. 

Absolutely

a beautiful weekend. We were able to get a lot done on the homestead. Raided the big box store Saturday for some more flowers and we were off and running. After looking at our progress it was decided that 'another' bed could be put in the space between said new beds and the older ones. So my Sunday was spent building said bed, running new water lines to all of the new additions, setting out all of the drip emitters, and mulching around everything as we had a ton of the stuff left over.

I was lucky in finding the old lines pretty quickly. I also installed the valves I wanted to on each bed so I can control what gets watered when.

Strawberry blooms are coming on and we already have the makings of some berries already.

Wife's Confederate Jasmine smells great right now. 

The lettuce has really turned around so we might get some of it before it gets too hot. 

Current overall view as of yesterday evening. Just a few more thing and I'm done for a while. You can see that the potatoes have really come on now. In the new, long bed I planted Blue Lake pole beans. 

After toiling away in the garden I went out and power- washed the front porch and sidewalk to rid them of all of the pollen flying about. My sinuses can't take much more of this stuff. 

The Wife, Boy and DiL are on their way to WV for the week leaving me with two dogs, 4 fish, and a deranged cat. The cat belongs to said DiL and son, and since he's gone and she is with us, so is the cat. On his defense it's new surroundings for him. Chewie could really care less but Ginny seems to want to play and is interested in Gunner (aka: odd cat.) We think this because Ginny was brought up with cats. She doesn't chase him, just scopes him out. We'll see who lives through this week. 

Cold front moving in mid- week so hopefully that doesn't affect anything planted or I'll be covering like a madman. Hope your weekend was productive too!