Gardening Lessons

We've had good success with our peppers outside, and our pumpkins are turning orange.  There's a fungus of sorts that's attacked all the leaves - or at least most of them - of our pumpkin plants, and it's doing quite a bit of damage.  We're learning the hard way about pumpkins, I suppose, but next year we'll be better prepared for at least the fungus part.  We'll also be prepared for the fertilizer part and the better soil.  Clearly that's the issue with the tomato plants, which are absolutely thriving in our planter on the deck - we've got dozens and more of those little cherry tomatoes blooming from there, which had great soil.  The mediocre soil in the ground below resulted in a poorer crop of cherry tomatoes.  There were chili peppers down there though - those bright red ones - that just kept coming one after another.  Maddie eats the peppers and the tomatoes too, a nice little healthy snack straight from the garden.  I'm still out there of course, popping off the salt gun, one shot at a time.  The spiders are getting bigger, and they just keep coming.  At least we have a safer alternative for fighting back.  The range is about three feet, so I might still have to get some of that hornet spray and a ladder to reach the ones at the top of the house. 

There are blooms too, hibiscus blooms from our plant that we got last year.  It's a big one, and it's growing fairly big with booms that seem to pop up and go so quickly.  Not all at once.  Just a bloom here and there, and then they're gone and replaced by blooms elsewhere on the plant.  And it really does attract hummingbirds, although they much prefer the hummingbird feeder above, the one Mom keeps filled with hummingbird food.  The ants like that one too, so Mom found an "ant moat" online, an ingenious plastic moat that you fill with water to prevent ants from climbing down and getting to the sugary water below that.  It's super effective, and of course it's also red so it attracts those hummingbirds.  

Another unwelcome creature are the mosquitos.  We've just had a lot of rain this year, and the mosquitoes seem to really like Maddie and myself.  One one hand, I can't fault them for having good taste.  On the other hand, I want to swat all of them.  We're not wanting to get any chemical solution to the mosquito problem, because we happen to like all the other insects and birds that visit with us.  Even the squirrels are somewhat manageable, although they've completely destroyed one of our bird feeders.  The basic idea is a bit of acrobatics, where they jump this distance across the deck, grab hold of the bird feeder if only for a moment, slinging it to and fro.  The result is a tumultuous outpouring of birdseed on the ground below, and that was super aggravating.  Eventually, the repetitive impact was too much for the bird feeder anyway, and now we're without a hanging one on the canopy.  We do have a few bowls and a plate though, and the cardinals love our back deck, as do the mourning doves that come in fairly regularly for their night patrol.  One evening we were sitting and watching them from the deck, but unbeknownst to all of us, so was a hawk.  The birds got wind of it and with a clamorous takeoff, they each Feld noisily to the safety of the very nearby branches as the hawk swooped in to our back yard, just missing out on another dinner.  

It's Tuesday and there's nothing on the schedule at night.  And that's okay to have an "off night" each week.  It gives us a chance to reset, at least.  Maddie had some more homework to do.  She's enjoying her early childhood class, although not so much her world history class.  She's learning about Southeast Asia in its early stages, and that's something the White County education back in the 80's wasn't keen on as much.  So I have no idea about it, other than a whole lot of martial arts movies that have no basis in reality, except for perhaps weapons, clothing and buildings.  Although those buildings in Asia have looked largely the same for hundreds of years, so there's that.

Maddie and Mom were wanting to watch "A Series of Unfortunate Events" lately, so that's been our recent binge on television.  But they're short episodes, and that works out for school nights.  We got to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, this after reading and saying our prayers.  It was a good day today.  We had no idea that tomorrow would be something quite dramatic for our family...