Garden Update

With Summer drawing to it’s languid conclusion, I’ve been busy busy busy trying to wrap up various yard projects and still have a bit of fun. Much to my surprise, despite our very cool summer, my garden has done all right.

I pulled out the peas a couple of weeks ago as powdery mildew was taking over and they were mostly done anyway. My zucchini has been coming on nicely; not so much that I’m overwhelmed, but enough that I can have some and give some away. The corn is ready to eat right now and I grilled a couple cobs on Sunday night when I had the parents out for dinner. Tomatoes are slow to ripen, even with my makeshift green house. The swiss chard is absolutely fantastic and I’m wondering when I should be picking my brussel sprouts and how.





Since the garden can be left alone to do it’s thing these days, I’ve been busy with a couple landscape projects: a retaining/decorative wall along the north side of my garage and a smaller decorative wall along my front lawn.

The Greater Wall, as I am calling it, is basically finished. I’m waiting for the sand to settle behind the blocks before I put down landscape fabric and rocks. The whole wall is about 40 feet long and has little steps on the far end.





The Lesser Wall is completely finished – that was my Labor Day weekend project.
To date, between the two walls, approximately 250 blocks have been moved in this endeavor and probably about 5 yards of sand.



But lest all that seems relatively dull, we had some further excitement:



Yes. A skunk. He showed up one morning and hung around for an hour. Not good when I need to leave for work and the two hounds need to pee before being kenneled. Then he was back the next day. Dogs and skunks are a bad combination; beside the obvious potential for being sprayed, skunks can be a carrier for rabies. The last think I wanted was a dog-skunk encounter. So the not-so-little skunk needed to be removed from the area. Two weeks after our first sighting, he was caught in a live trap and taken away.