Hados Folly

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And the leaves are mostly gone! Dang. Missed it again. There’s been rain, rain, and more rain for the past month and every storm blows away leaves. It rained saturday of course. We got some stuff at Wadlers – stain for the treehouse and I got some tulip bulbs. We’re checking out the wheelbarrows – the one we have is sort of crumbling. But Wadlers is probably the most pricey place to buy that so we’ll just be thinking about that for a while.

Mark hauled some wood around – he’s out of his sling and starting to recover his strength. He’s not chopping yet – Steve stopped by and said he has a splitter we can borrow. I did some OCD weeding and collected a giant pile of ready to chip branches. It was a little wet for wood chipping, though, so I plan to do that next weekend. Today, Sunday, was actually pretty beautiful – the sun came out and it was a gorgeous fall day. But I’m still putting off the chip-o-rama til next weekend.

Gorgeous weekend. Mark Maina came up for a visit and we kayaked Lake Wawaka. It always seems like a little mill pond in my mind but it’s pretty big and windy. We went as far northeast as we could – tried to make it past the rapids but it’s like a weird wind tunnel there. You paddle as hard as you can and go nowhere.

We were away for 2 weeks and the garden went kinda crazy. The snap peas and pole beans wrapped themselves around the tomato plants! My elaborate stakes and guidelines didn’t work at all. So I added a bunch of new stakes and tried to untwist the bean tendrils from around the tomatoes and onto the new stakes. It might work. It’s going to be really crazy when everything is full size. I probably should have thinned the bean plants – I hate killing plants but I think there are too many crowded into that space.

The green beans wrapping themselves around the tomatoes - ignoring the stakes and strings I set up for them.

Mark dislocated his shoulder playing softball so he was forced to mostly sit and read all weekend. I had to drive up from NY friday night in the rain – pretty scary. I can’t wait til the Google self-driving car is available.

The honeysuckle plant is doing really well this year and today we saw the hummingbird sipping from it! No picture of course – those guys don’t pose.

Mark has been using the giant binoculars to spy on an A-frame house on a ridge across the hollow/valley/far away. And he’s become obsessed with figuring out where it is, looking at google earth he figured out it was on Hog Mountain Road so we drove over there this morning to see if we could find it. We went up a hellacious scary road – very steep, windy and dirt. I was freaking out a little and Mark was gleefully looking all over the place as he drove. We didn’t find the a-frame but we found a big barn that we can see from the porch. And a really great neighborhood. There are all these interesting areas up in the mountains here – different personalities. Anyway, this particular neighborhood had a lot of great old farmhouses and amazing views. Makes me want to get rid of all these dopey trees blocking our mountain view.

I dug up the green manure and turned all the dirt in that plot. I’m surprised I got it done in one day. That’s the kind of thing I can turn into a major project by trying to dig out all the rocks. Maybe I’m getting over my gardening OCD.

Mark found that he can hear WFMU clear as in NYC up in his man-cave. It comes from a repeater station in the Hudson valley. So we can hear the glory of Gaylord as well as the dreck of Rex/Bill Kelly etc. IMHO, that is.

Big rainy weekend. Yesterday it stopped raining for most of the day so we could do some stuff outside. But there was an ongoing downpour all evening. I kept the woodchipper outside for the last couple weeks because I’m kind of obsessed with making woodchips. I’m afraid it’s going to get all rusty if I don’t bring it in. So today I’m going to try to wrap up the chip marathon and put it away.

On the bright side, the flowers look great. The honeysuckle has lots of orange flowers – I’ve never seen it like that. And the clematis has a couple big flowers. I want to make another rough trellis for it to spread out on. And the peas and beans and tomatoes are about twice as big as they were last week so I made bigger stakes for the tomatoes and rigged up some more strings for the little bean plants to grab onto. I bought a zucchini plant at the farmers market – a total impulse buy because I don’t like zucchini! But it only cost $1 and I know it will grow. I’ll be able to plant some stuff in the big green-compost plot soon so the zucchini will go there.

Eric is up and has been cutting down trees – making the little zen window view bigger. We agree that the little piece of mountains that we see makes us want to see more. The trees in front of the house seem like an impediment. But I think we would be sorry if we took those trees down. Our house would be like all the other houses up here – a little house on a bald hill. I like the coziness of being surrounded by trees. Eric has the loudest chainsaw known to man, btw.

Mark is thrilled about how well his new culvert/ditch thing is handling the rain. It’s diverting the water from the driveway and back yard into the ditch. Pretty cool. Our whole backyard area went from a wetland to a dryland. And now the berm along the ditch has lots of wild flowers.

The green manure is almost due to be harvested. You’re supposed to let it grow to 6 to 9 inches and then cut it down and let it wilt a bit and then dig it into the soil. And it supplies nutrients to the soil – like compost.

I finished messing with the green manure and planted some nasturtiums and a zucchini plant. I split the area up into 5 sections with paths between them so I wouldn’t be tromping over the dirt. It’s pretty dense clay so walking on it undermines all the dirt enhancement I’ve been trying to carry out. I’m planting whatever will grow – hence the zucchini. I think I’m going to put some cucumbers in with the zucchini. And potatoes in the areas that get the least sun. My basic plan is to grow anything at all just to get some roots aerating the dirt.

Saw the hummingbird drinking from the honeysuckle again today – the best thing ever.

And we saw the mysterious A-frame from another angle today – when you turn onto RT 30 from Halcottville it appears up on the hill. And then it disappears. It’s a Mark Hado mystery! I’ve been reading a great Wallander book this weekend and we’ve been listening to a horrible Kay Scarpetta mystery in the car so I have mysteries on the brain. I can’t believe how awful the Scarpetta book is. I basically just stopped listening for the last hour of the ride. Mark actually wants to finish it so we have about 4 or 5 cds left to go. I wish the NYPL had better books on CD.

I chopped down the asparagas last weekend but then today read that you should do that in the fall. Oops. I hope it comes back next year.

The snap peas are growing so fast. They went from seed to 5″ in a week. Amazing. So I put up some poles with strings for them to climb – they’ll be a foot high by next weekend if they keep going at this rate. And some sunflowers are poking up – the ones I planted in the hog scalder with nice composty dirt. The ones I planted in the berm which has some pretty harsh clay soil are not showing up yet.

Mark was shoring up the ditch by the culvert with rocks. Major construction project.

We got some delicious strawberries at the farmers market. And I got a plant for the rocks – Lisa made a great suggestion last week – pile some dirt on the rocks and plant something. Genious. So that’s what I did. Made some extra good dirt with compost, regular dirt and peat moss (I swear I’m gonna stop using it after I use up this bag.)

The plant is Snow in Summer (Cerastium tomentosum) – little white flowers that supposedly spread a lot.

More wood chips too. And the green manure is coming along.

Well, Lisa, Bill, Alex and Mildred came up for Memorial Day weekend – it’s kind of a tradition now. We had such a good time that I totally skipped writing anything about it. And now, here I am in November trying to remember what we did and I can’t remember a thing. I would guess that we ate a lot of delicious food and sat on the porch and talked a lot.

The lilacs bloomed for the first time this year. It took about 5 years and a chicken wire fence around the bush to keep the deer from eating the buds.

Today I planted the lamiums under the hawthorn tree and the Daylilies in the berm by the ditch behind the house.

Mark is finishing up his new little ditch across the driveway. It takes water running down the driveway and guides it into the ditch that Ludwig dug last year. He made this wooden liner for the ditch like one we saw at Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright house.

I did some drawings of my garden with the pen/markers Mark gave me for Christmas but I seem to have forgotten how to draw. I quit drawing for a year and it’s gone. I think the problem is the markers! I need many more shades of green.

Went to the Cha Cha Hut for dinner and it was soooo good. I wolfed a brisket and bbq beans platter down  and then felt like lying down. Mark had ribs. We drove through a wild downpour on the way there. When we got home there was no power. Got some  candles lit and it was all cozy and then the power came back on. Later  there was a massive thunder and lightning storm so we turned out all the lights and watched the light show. It was really powerful – felt like the house was going to lift off a few times.

I went over to Steve’s today and dug 6 big buckets of composted  manure from his pile.  It was a pretty intense farmy experience. The  compost heap was out behind the barn and there was a lot of muck to walk  through. I sunk 8 or 10 inches in some spots. Thank God for  Wellingtons. I would have lost my old gardening shoes in there. Anyway,  it was so great to be able to get this stuff – black gold! I think Steve  and his wife should have “Dig Your Own Compost” business the way some  farms have that Pick Your Own Strawberries or pumpkins or whatnot. Lots  of weekend types would jump at a chance to dig some pails of manure for a  couple bucks a pail. I’m going to suggest it next time I see him.

So  I mixed up a delightful batch of peat moss and manure and added it to  all my various planting spots.  Tomorrow I’m going to do some serious  wood chipping.

Mark fixed the ladder up to the treehouse. It got  all messed up over the winter. The foundation froze and shifted and the  ladder ended up hanging from the platform. Big mess. So he dug a footing  and filled it with gravel and reset the ladder in it. Looks like we’ll  be taking the ladder down over the winter from now on.