Where does that sentence come from? "as perennial as the grass" Seems to me that it's from a famous poem, or work of literature. That's the way my mind works - I remember bits and pieces like that, but next to nothing for reference points. At any rate, I've always loved the way it rolls off the tongue, and the reassurance it brings - that no matter what else goes on in this world, that the grass will always grow.
There was no doubt of this fact this past week. Two weeks ago, before the recent rains, our lawn was brown and brittle. It's a farm lawn, there are no pampering treatments to keep it weed free and lush here. On wet years it stays green throughout the whole summer, but give it a hot, dry season and the truth shows pretty fast. The grass quits growing and soon dries right off; the weeds take over. One would swear that all plant life would have to be started over from seed, but let it get a good drink and some sunshine and it's a nicer lawn now that it has been all summer long. I started cutting it yesterday and will finish as soon as the dew dries this morning. I love the scent of fresh cut grass.
The sky is September blue this morning. I don't know how to describe it, but it's a kinder, softer blue than the dazzling blue of summer skies. The crickets are chirping in the grasses (and in the basement - how DO they get in?) and the atmosphere takes on this air of completion. A lot of people see autumn as a sign of approaching winter, but it is by far my favorite season - and the leaves haven't even started to change colors yet!
Glen is spending his Sunday morning grinding grain for cattle feed and then plans to bale straw off the neighbor's rye field this afternoon. Right after the rains he wasn't doing much oilfield work because of the muddy conditions, but he put in a full week this week. Compared to last summer - when the price of oil was crazy - it has been pretty slow going this year. It is picking up now, but there are some rigs that have only called their crews back in the last two weeks. That's a long time between paychecks. I guess that's why we still have the cattle - it keeps an income flow for us no matter what the whim of the marketplace is doing.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Halfway through August and very little summer to speak of. This has been a season for the record books.
My garden has been surprising me though. At first nothing seemed to be growing - that cold spring and old seed with questionable germination being what I blamed it on. There wasn't a single Swiss chard that came up and the beets and beans were few enough to count. The radishes - what did show up - went straight from seed to going to seed. I think we only had one picking of them. On the other hand, this was a good year for leaf lettuce and a spectacular one for peas and potatoes. I planted one double row of peas (half what I usually do and a quarter of what I took on when the kids were growing up) and I can't keep up to their production. I even had to freeze some last night; something I haven't done in years. It's crazy, but there will be at least one more picking just as large.
But impressive as they are, I cannot believe my potatoes. There are three rows planted what I thought was far enough apart for me to be able to till and hill between them no problem. Those plants are so lush and huge that trying to walk through them is a challenge and hilling them impossible. Potatoes are exploding out of the ground. At this rate, one row would have been plenty. I also seem to be enjoying year three of a miracle - not one single potato bug! I don't know if some unknown disease did them in three years ago (I had plenty before that), or, did the type of potato seed I planted three years ago have some kind of super resistance to the bugs? At any rate, I'm not taking any chances - I will again save seed from this year for next year. I doubt that saving it will be a problem, there will be enough to feed an army by the looks of things.
Things had been getting pretty dire moisture-wise in the past month, but Mother Nature finally came through for us on Friday night. In our area we got almost two inches and some places got more than double that. They say would could get even more in the next day or two and while anyone with cattle welcomes the idea the grain farmers aren't quite so happy about it. What this rain will do is promote new plant growth and keep things green. People with cattle to feed on pastures couldn't be happier with that scenario. Farmers who already know that their crops are a couple weeks behind in development and susceptible to frost just want dry heat to force the crops to ripen so they can be combined and stored in a bin, safe and sound. Just goes to show; you can't make everyone happy.
Today I would like to be out cutting grass but the lawn is too wet to try. It hasn't rained for 24 hours now, but there has been no sun or wind to dry things up. It feels like the whole weekend is being wasted because I can't be outside.
A couple weeks ago we spent Sunday afternoon decommissioning a well in our yard. We are very lucky in that our whole yard is a sand point - we can pretty much drop a well cribbing down anywhere and get very good drinking water. Over the 100 plus years that people have lived at this yard site there have been numerous wells dug. The older ones were built with wooden and then meatal cribbing which eventually cave in. That happened to us a few years ago and we dug a new one (concrete cribbing this time - it will last for a long time) but as yet we hadn't got around to filling in the old well. This spring the wellhouse covering this well took a wild lean to the west as the frost came out of the ground, meaning that the top of the cribbing was caving in too. Something had to be done as there was a place along the north side where an animal or a small child could have fallen in.
You would think that with everything falling to such pieces, that it would have been easy to pull out what was left and fill it all in, but it was a BIG project and took more than double the time we thought it would. The job still isn't really done because we still want to install the wellhouse back on top of the new cribbing but it needs some sort of a foundation first. The big plus for me, though, is that the new well isn't in the sight line to the barn. I can actually see across the yard from the deck - very handy when I want to know what the farmer is doing over there!
My garden has been surprising me though. At first nothing seemed to be growing - that cold spring and old seed with questionable germination being what I blamed it on. There wasn't a single Swiss chard that came up and the beets and beans were few enough to count. The radishes - what did show up - went straight from seed to going to seed. I think we only had one picking of them. On the other hand, this was a good year for leaf lettuce and a spectacular one for peas and potatoes. I planted one double row of peas (half what I usually do and a quarter of what I took on when the kids were growing up) and I can't keep up to their production. I even had to freeze some last night; something I haven't done in years. It's crazy, but there will be at least one more picking just as large.
But impressive as they are, I cannot believe my potatoes. There are three rows planted what I thought was far enough apart for me to be able to till and hill between them no problem. Those plants are so lush and huge that trying to walk through them is a challenge and hilling them impossible. Potatoes are exploding out of the ground. At this rate, one row would have been plenty. I also seem to be enjoying year three of a miracle - not one single potato bug! I don't know if some unknown disease did them in three years ago (I had plenty before that), or, did the type of potato seed I planted three years ago have some kind of super resistance to the bugs? At any rate, I'm not taking any chances - I will again save seed from this year for next year. I doubt that saving it will be a problem, there will be enough to feed an army by the looks of things.
Things had been getting pretty dire moisture-wise in the past month, but Mother Nature finally came through for us on Friday night. In our area we got almost two inches and some places got more than double that. They say would could get even more in the next day or two and while anyone with cattle welcomes the idea the grain farmers aren't quite so happy about it. What this rain will do is promote new plant growth and keep things green. People with cattle to feed on pastures couldn't be happier with that scenario. Farmers who already know that their crops are a couple weeks behind in development and susceptible to frost just want dry heat to force the crops to ripen so they can be combined and stored in a bin, safe and sound. Just goes to show; you can't make everyone happy.
Today I would like to be out cutting grass but the lawn is too wet to try. It hasn't rained for 24 hours now, but there has been no sun or wind to dry things up. It feels like the whole weekend is being wasted because I can't be outside.
A couple weeks ago we spent Sunday afternoon decommissioning a well in our yard. We are very lucky in that our whole yard is a sand point - we can pretty much drop a well cribbing down anywhere and get very good drinking water. Over the 100 plus years that people have lived at this yard site there have been numerous wells dug. The older ones were built with wooden and then meatal cribbing which eventually cave in. That happened to us a few years ago and we dug a new one (concrete cribbing this time - it will last for a long time) but as yet we hadn't got around to filling in the old well. This spring the wellhouse covering this well took a wild lean to the west as the frost came out of the ground, meaning that the top of the cribbing was caving in too. Something had to be done as there was a place along the north side where an animal or a small child could have fallen in.
You would think that with everything falling to such pieces, that it would have been easy to pull out what was left and fill it all in, but it was a BIG project and took more than double the time we thought it would. The job still isn't really done because we still want to install the wellhouse back on top of the new cribbing but it needs some sort of a foundation first. The big plus for me, though, is that the new well isn't in the sight line to the barn. I can actually see across the yard from the deck - very handy when I want to know what the farmer is doing over there!
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