Five for Friday

It’s that time of week once again to do battle with my brain and to see who is gonna assimilate whom. Let’s see where it takes me to this week.

1. There was frost on the pumpkins this morning. I think my green beans froze too after yesterday morning’s rain that went thru. I’ll have to wait and see what the next couple days brings. The potato stalks are laying down which means I’ll cut the stalks back sometime today and get that bed ready for the winter. My flowers are more than likely shot and they will hafta be cleaned up soon as well.
2. I’m still struggling with heat controls for my hoop houses. I keep reminding myself that the goal is to keep them from freezing and not make them tropical.
3. I daisy chained the lights in the shed yesterday so I could have more than one pull chain light in there. I was almost all done after checking to make sure that they worked and “POP!” went the one that I over-tightened. That sucked. Back to my store of dreams to get a replacement and rework what I had already worked on. I will install another electrical outlet this weekend since I moved my work bench.
4. I have to finish repairing my fire pit this weekend and it’s chore #1. I need it ready to use once again.
5. I’m waiting for the leaves to start falling faster right now. Maybe they will or maybe that “killing frost” will be here in the next couple days. It will look like they all dropped at once when that killing frost finally gets here.

There ya have it. Feel free to comment and/or wave a vigorous “HOWDY!” on your way thru if’n ya want. 🙂

That’s a wrap for warm weather this year

We’re done. Yesterday should be the last day of temps in the 70’s for this year. The 10 day forecast shows temps that are anywhere from 47F – 60F (8 – 16C) for the rest of the month. Yeh, it will get an overnight low temp down to 29F (2C) over the next few days. It’s a good thing I switched out the lights in the raised beds today. I don’t know how well they would have been down that low.

I think my second crop of green beans is just about done since there are no new blooms on the plants. I’ll cover them for now but I suspect I’ll be pulling the plants out of the bed before the end of the month. My potatoes are done and I’ll cut back the stalks and then cover up the bed with a couple painter tarps and see if I can use the bed as cold storage over the winter. I lose only the crop if they freeze since I grew all of the plants from potatoes that went to seed on me.

But other than the above, it was a nice day for a morning walk. It had rained last night and the air smelled of damp earth, wet leaves and cool wet air. It all blended into a wet and musty leafy earthy smell that I am so familiar with with Autumns that I grew up with back home. I miss those sensations in November. I miss the taste of a cold apple that you bite into after you picked it fresh from the tree. I miss the cold and sweet taste of Fall pears after you pick them fresh from the tree. I miss the howl of the November wind at night as it blew thru the elm trees outside our house. I miss looking up into a November gray bluish sky to see hundreds of Canadian geese and ducks flying south for the winter.

There are times that I wish that I could turn back the clock to re-experience those sensations once again. No, I don’t want to revisit the bad times and the bad memories. But I re-live a part of those sensations whenever I hold up a handful of dried leaves to my nose and breathe in the fragrance of Autumn.

Set Back Day

I caught this Minnesota Wingless Dragon hanging around my potato bed because I had a bird feeder on the other end of it. The early morning rising sun and the screen gave it a pretty good softening effect if I do say so my self … which I did. It wasn’t happy that I was focused on it instead of paying attention to my work and it eventually ran off extremely agitated at me.

I adjusted the timer to my hoop houses since it would need done anywho and eventually it will just run all day. I found a problem with the C9 lights that I am using. They should be cooking up a lot of heat but I found out that they are a cooler, more energy efficient type of light bulb. That’s not gonna between now and late April/early May. So, it’s back to the drawing board and recovering the old style C7 lights that I threw out and re-stringing everything tomorrow after work. Not fun.

Still, it’s better to find out now versus mid-January.

Sunday Evening

It was a Sunday for me. I met friends for a late breakfast, worked on the yard, cleaned up the shed and finished setting up my hoop houses for the icky bad and cold as hell frozen over with as cold arse witch’s tits weather that will eventually find its way here to central Minnesota. But I digress just a tad bit. I found two boxes of never used C9 Christmas lights and hell ya I had to get strung in my beds since this is going to be my heat source for them over the next several months of frozen hell.

Check out how cool they look in the dark.

Five for Friday

It’s that time of week once again and I best get going on this so I don’t put it off any longer. Let’s see where the ol’ grey matter takes us to this week.

1. It’s “brrrrrrrrrrrrr” out there at 39F (4C). I get cold shivers whenever I see single digit temps where they be in Fahrenheit or in Celsius. I actually have to wear jeans this morning for my walk. I hate it when central Minnesota throws the temperature switch off. I know what’s coming. There goes my tan lines.
2. My bathroom repairs would be done if I would quit screwing up the plumbing access cover. I painted it so it would blend in with the colour scheme but I keep scratching it.
3. I keep checking my thrift savings account to see how it’s doing. It took a dive due to the economy and it’s been slow to recover. It’s too bad I’m retired and can’t contribute to it any more. I would be buying a bunch of cheap shares that would only increase in value once the economy recovered.
4. I finally received my shallots from Burpee so I can plant them in my one garden bed for the winter. I bought a blue tooth thermometer that connects to my smart phone. I plan on switching it back and forth between the two beds to regulate the temperature over the coming icky bad, cold months.
5. I think I’ll buy some more firewood for my fire pit so I can have more evening fires now that the weather will keep the mosquitoes at bay. It will be nice to sit outside with a fire and not be eaten alive by the Minnesota state bird.

There ya have it. Feel free to comment and/or wave a hearty “HOWDY!” on your way thru if’n you would like.