Gardening in 90 degree weather

Yesterday I worked in the garden 4 hours - most of that in 90 degree weather, so I'm making it a shorter day today. I'm on a cool off break before heading back out to hand water newly planted seeds. Between yesterday and I today I've planted carrots, beets, broccoli raab, three types of beans, some turnips and parsley, and harvested, some more beans, cucumbers, currants (which I left on the bush too long),and most of the onions which are now drying on the front porch.

I also had to put down some blood meal, which will hopefully keep the critters away from my corn. One interloper already pulled down one the stalks and and took a test bite out of the tip. I guess he or she is waiting for them to get bigger and sweeter. I'm just hoping that the blood meal will work. Being surrounded by forest land makes growing corn a difficult thing to do without fencing or huge dogs to ward off bunnies, deer and raccoons.

Last nights dinner was veggies from the garden - sauteed summer squash, potato pancakes and green beans. Jim added some leftover steak to his plate; but I just wanted veggies.

After watering, I'll get those pickles started which I didn't have time or energy for yesterday. I want to make the Jewish barrel pickles that I used to buy from street vendors in lower Manhattan. They're the same type you get in Jewish delis, which are just barely pickled. I found two recipes on line, so I may just try both. One is done in a crock with whole cucumbers and the other uses just two wide mouth jars, using cucumbers sliced vertically. Those are ready to eat in 3 days, or so says the author. So it will be interesting to do a side by side test.

Time to don my old straw hat and do that hand watering.

FIRING HARVESTING WEEDING

Got the tiny test kiln going around 5am and finished at 4:55 and had dinner ready at 5. I had to watch the firing like a hawk since I put a cone 8 in the kiln sitter to keep it from going off during the soak and fire down. It took as much tweaking of controls and leg work as firing my big soda kiln; but I think I was able to manually soak and follow the firing down schedule I had planned. Next time I do these cone 6 tests, they're going in my larger, digital controlled, Skutt!

I got some garden time and did a bit of weeding and harvested the first few plum tomatoes, cucumbers and beans (after buying a cucumber and some beans at yesterdays wonderful festivities at the Knife and Fork! So dinner was an onion and sardine salad, boiled parsley potatoes, buttered beans and cucumbers in dill and sour cream.

In between,I'm still dealing with my Dell laptop problems, which now seem to point to a Windows problem now that they seem to have fixed the hardware issues. It's refusing to make a reboot/repair disk; but I have one more thing to try tomorrow, using the installation disk. I'm too pooped to do much more of anything tonight but lift my wine glass and make some firing notes.

What's blooming

The first Irises and lilacs and some other shrubs have been blooming for several days; and the June and ever bearing strawberries I planted last month are also in flower. Volunteer johnny jump ups and tomato and morning glory seedlings seem to be everywhere!

Yesterday, I cut more asparagus and had enough for last nights dinner(cooked asparagus piled high on toast, topped with chopped hard boiled eggs and bacon pieces and covered in lemon butter.)

I've been up since 3am thanks to a headache interrupting my sleep. Since I couldn't get back to sleep I decided to spend part of the wee hours catching up with some email and snail mail. Studio time was not an option the way I felt so after the light, morning rain passed, I thought a few minutes in the garden might perk me up. Two hours later I have a tidier garden, with freshly planted pansies,and a few lemon yellow dahlias, some pruned roses and vines and a couple of huge piles of weeds and garden debris for Jim to discard in the woods. Now I'm going to get in a reclining position and hope I can manage to nap for a bit.

Yunomi

Here's a luscious yunomi that I bought at a little shop near Mt. Hood in Oregon several years ago. If anyone knows whose work this is, please let me know. I love the buttery quality of the glaze on this piece.
It's a gorgeous, warm morning here. Not that I'm not going to enjoy it; but these overly warm days this early in the season, brings to mind what happened two years ago when a similar warm spell was followed by several days of hard freeze and we didn't get a single piece of fruit from our fruit trees and lost a couple of Japanese maples and some perennials.
Yesterday I woke up feeling awful but by late morning I was feeling better and after lunch I went out and got my hands in the dirt and did some garden cleanup and dug the hole for the apricot tree. The sun and air were healing. They always are for me.
I'll be planting today and got started yesterday on the trench for the asparagus crowns. I did some research on planting them and the new wisdom is to only plant them 5-6 inches deep for better yield. That is going to make my job a lot easier!
Before breakfast I got at least 30-40 trailing lobelia seedlings and some Italian flat leaf parsley transplanted. They're so tiny, but they were so crowded I had to get them out of the seed starter mix into a potting soil mix. I hope they do OK, since I can't find this variety in local garden stores so I usually start my own. My first tomato seedling sprouted two days ago but the rest are taking their time. I put those peat pots in the greenhouse window this morning, hoping the direct, natural light may wake them up!
The painter is coming to finish up the last of the painting this afternoon and she's bringing her daughter to work in the garden with me for a couple of hours. It will be nice to have a bit of help catching up with the garden cleanup and planting.
Well, time to plant that apricot tree and do more garden cleanup before lunch.


Till later,
June