monday's mountain musings

I know...I have said this before but I am saying it again and this time I mean it, I think. After tomorrow we will be done planting until fall crops need starting. That should give us a near one month break before we need to be getting  broccoli and cabbage seeds going for a mid august planting in the gardens. Break is not really the proper term as  things will be ripening in larger  amounts here very shortly, keeping up with weeds is always a chore and with any luck tobacco will be needing its daily worm plucking sessions but   that aint my job cuz those buggers are just gross so I let manthing tend them nasty buggers and I tend the  tomato patch. This way we keep the tobacco off and away from the tomatoes to prevent mosaic.

The gardens are really starting to take off now. I love watching everything fill out, grow and start producing,  the scenery around here changes so quickly it is almost hard to keep up with. Our early corn is starting to tassle, tomatoes are forming,  cucumbers,  some melons, squash of all sorts are flowering and beans climbing everywhere.  I ripped out the tomatoes and cukes in the GH as they  had a mildew or somethimg starting on them and I was not going to take any chances. So I planted some butter beans, new cukes, melons and okra in there  to take their place. I also have beans and okra growing on the balcony to see how they do up there. A full update on the gardens will  come on a rainy day this week. The picture above is one of my direct seed tomatoes that  I put in the hot tub. It is about 8 inches tall already and only a few weeks old.  I am starting to think direct seeding them may be a time saving solution for a good portion of our future tomatoes  as some of our rogue tomatoes are near two foot tall and flowering just behind the ones we spent time seeding, transplanting and then planting.

Tomorrow we are planting more tobacco and direct sowing some for an experiment. We have several rogue plants that self sowed  from last year and they seem to be doing much better than the transplants this year. We have one more round of transplants to go in but instead of giving us more plants we seem to just be replacing ones that are dying off. Some winter type squash will be inter planted with the tobacco as will some pumpkins.

In other news...
The drive way is now fixed back to proper condition. we were very lucky that the folks   doing the work for us were as slow as they were and could be here  the day after we called them. On a sad note the ol feller flat out told me that next time we called he would likely be out of business. It was pretty sad seeing a big,  burley ol Vietnam vet  that has been in business for himself all his life  dam near cry and tell me he  doesn't know if he can make it once he loses the last truck in his business. As we talked about  our situation, gardens, the oil spoil and economy in general he told me  of how he had no electricity until the age of 15 and his grand parents that has raised him had  raised nearly all  their food. I  just looked at him n told him he would be fine and to look at gardening as his new full time job with  hauling gravel as a hobby.

School is going along pretty well. Next week is the  half way point of my first block of classes already. If  it continues on at this pace I will be finished before I  know it.