June 6, 2011

Things are heating up temperature wise and with some of the first waves of hot weather the garden is doing the "explosion" thing. Seems like everything just explodes out of the ground around this time of the year. I watch the garden slowly make some progress over the course of a month or so and then, seemingly overnight, everything is double the size in a few days. Of course, the weeds also explode out of the ground! I still have a few things to plant and just can't seem to get around to doing it.

I am trying to get in some butterfly monitoring sessions. Sally and I went out last Sunday and I went out again yesterday. I have also been busy at work trying to get some invasives sprayed at Hickory Creek Barrens before it sets seed. I have been out spraying mainly reed canary grass but also encountered a huge area of Canadian thistle that I sprayed yesterday. Between spraying and doing monitoring, I was at HCB for nearly 5 hours yesterday.

I also worked on my part time job on Saturday and spent several hours at the pastor's house. What a mess! I am almost to the point where I can consider putting down the mulch and told the pastor to go get some. I will try to do a little more spraying this week (weather dependant) and then put the mulch down. Then it will be maintenance for the rest of the summer.

Friday night I did a Star Wars event in Plainfield at Eagle Pointe School. It was a small event, but lots of fun. The school was doing a fundraiser by showing "Star Wars-A New Hope" on a screen set up outside of the school. It was a lot of fun but it got REALLY hot out. At one point, I looked down and saw the front of my costume was wet from sweat dripping down from my head. The ride home was really hot as well since my ac in the truck does not work and I was still in most of my costume since I didn't bother to bring a change of clothes. I didn't think it would stay that hot.

I also did a few other things this weeked. One of the things I have always hated about my RFT pants is the gusset at the knees. So I took a seam ripper, opened up both sides of both legs, removed the gusset and had to try to sew it back together. I had to sew them back up in a different manner because of the way the leg seams were sewn on a commercial machine. The pants came out pretty good and hopefully they will fit a little better.

I also made jam VERY early yesterday morning. Fruit was pretty reasonable so I purchased a pineapple, peaches, blueberries and raspberries. Simultaneously I made pineapple jam and blueberry jam and put up a few jars of that fruit separately. I then combined the pineapple and blueberry into one pot and processed them together. Also, I made a few jars of raspberry/peach preserves. I think all of it set ok and I will be selling raffle tickets on the jam at the August or September Master Gardener Pot luck with the $$ going to Making Strides Against Breast Cancer.

It is going to be HOT for the next couple of days, so I will be limiting my activites but I hope to get the last few things planted tonight as rain is predicted almost every day this week.