Wait..What..Not Again!

As June progressed, I finally got all the turnip greens out of my garden, and it seemed things were well on their way to a fabulous summer. I peeled and chopped and canned zucchini and summer squash while dreams of mountains of beans, rivers of sweet peas and bushels of tomatoes danced him my head. Once again, Mother Nature had other plans.

That's right - we have another drought on our hands. Just as my corn was tasseling and the bean pods were plumping, the rains went away. For more than three weeks, not a drop fell from the heavens. When the grass starts crunching under your feet, then you know it's dry out there.

So, I harvested my cucumbers (apparently they like it hot!), and squash and monitored the damages. Both my helpful hubby and my father-in-law pronounced my garden dead on more than one occasion, only to see me harvest baskets of potential pickles. My corn popped inside the husks but the beans popped out in full force, leading to a basket so full I had to have my son carry it to the house.

At last I relented and pronounced the harvest done. Some seeds were extra prolific (Squash of all kinds, cucumbers, pole beans) while others never ever popped through (carrots, peppers, peas). But for what did come up I reaped gold.

My final tally for the first Reece garden is: 20 quarts of beans, 15 pints of pickles and pickle relish, 5 quarts of summer squash and onions, 10 pints of lemon honey jelly, 8 pints of zucchini pickles, and 3 quarts of pickled butternut squash. All in all not a bad haul.

The tomatoes came in slow and never in any great quantities, so I just shared them with friends and co-workers. We got 5 full grown pumpkins, which were ready by the end of July. I am saving mine for Halloween. The biggest failure was no watermelons. I love watermelon in the summer. This year I had to resort to grocery store melon. Boo.

I gathered seeds from all the produce that I could and I intend to try again next year. No winter garden, I'm not ready to fight another battle against turnip greens. No, we are going to plow, rake, plow, rake, and hope for cleaner dirt next spring. I had a lot of fun, recalled a lot of good times with my father, and I wouldn't trade a callous or twinge in my carpal tunnel for anything else. Good times from the simplest thing - a new memory to join the many from childhood.

Thanks for listening to my summer saga. It might not sound like all that much fun, but trust me. It was a blast.

Spring Planting (Or Replanting?)

Once we decided to do a garden this year, the decision on what to plant was left up to me with hubby's stamp of approval. Corn, beans, peas, tomatoes, watermelons - all standard Georgia garden fare. With the ground prepared and the seeds ready we set out the rows and off to the races we went. All the squashes, beans, peas, melons, in three short hours we had seeded an area more than 1000 square feet. Happy and pleased with a job well done, we headed off for our first week of waiting.

Anxiously I watched the weather report, glad when radar showed rain heading in our general direction. The weekend took forever to come around again. Sunday morning arrived at last and I bounced in the car like a kid on the way to see Santa. Just when I could wait no more, we turned down the street, up the long winding driveway, then past the garden. I could see little green shoots beginning to poke through as we headed to the main house.

Church seemed to drag that morning, and lunch was forever. Just when I thought I would burst from anticipation, we arrived back at the farm. Changing into work clothes I race out to my little slice of heaven to find...

Turnip greens. That's right, turnip greens popping up all over my nicely plotted garden.

Imagine my surprise. Covering the entire garden, in my neat straight rows and in between, anywhere there was a spare inch of fertilized earth, were little turnip green leaves. Apparently the previous fall, for a winter garden, one of the helpers on my father-in-law's farm had planted turnips, harvested the greens but left the turnips themselves in the ground. With the warmer weather and the fertile spring rains, those little suckers just popped right out, heedless to the fact they are winter crops that cannot survive the hot Georgia summers.

So my first full Sunday as a gardener was spent identifying and pulling little turnip greens while trying to not pull up actual seedlings that were wanted. This is when I discovered what a non-outdoors man I married. He couldn't identify weeds from plants, didn't like having to pull so many wrong plants, and within 45 minutes had abandoned me completely to sit on the front porch drinking ice tea while I sweat and pulled and cursed turnips with my every fiber.

I was not amused.

Welcome To My Mid-Life Crisis

This fall I will turn fifty, a point of dread for me since my mother turned fifty. Of course I was only 8 at the time and thought my mother would shrivel up and die. I mean, really - half a century seemed ANCIENT! Of course, as the magic age has steadily approached my opinion has changed. I know I won't shrivel up once my birthday arrives. Or at least I hope not.

But in preparation for this momentous occasion I decided to learn new skills, or resurrect skills not used since my childhood. First up on the list: plant a garden for the purpose of canning and freezing food for the winter.

My father's family were farmers and every year, no matter where we lived, there was always a garden. Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, not to mention trips to the big farmer's market would provide plenty of fresh vegetables for the months when good produce was hard to find. While it isn't such a necessity to have a personal garden any more, nothing can beat the taste of good, fresh produce.

Helpful hubby promised to be of assistance and my father-in-law plowed the garden up at his farm, about an hour north of where we live. After carefully searching the Internet for heirloom seeds (plants which can produce seeds for replanting) I made my selections and off we went to create our first garden together in 25 years of marriage.

Little did I know that I have married the only man in North Georgia to never have spent any time in a garden!

Join me for my series: So... You Want to Plant a Garden! as I provide a play-by-play commentary on my summer project. It will make you laugh. I promise!

My Life Is So Interesting...

So, I love animals. All animals, but my favorite (forgive me my puppies!) are horses. I have been horse crazy since I was a little girl. My earliest memories are of a pony ride at the fairgrounds in Florida when I was no more than three years old. Ever since that moment, I knew these magnificent creatures would be in my life.

I now have three equine members of my family: Penny (Registered Name: How Much Money) a lovely 16yo Quarter Horse mare with good lucks and a loving personality. She was my daughter's first horse and considers my dear daughter her personal property. Second is AraBella, part Welsh Pony part Arabian. Bella was my first rescue adoption. She had given birth only to have her foal stolen by the alpha mare in her pasture. It has taken over a year to get her back on track and happy. She loves to jump and has a typical pony attitude.

My newest addition came last summer - Vince. Registered Name - Vincent Van Versa, Vince is 12yo and has just been confirmed as having been exposed to EPM, a parasitic infection in horses which attacks the Central Nervous System. The symptoms Vince has include tripping, loss of balance and moodiness. After much conversation we have elected to take him to the University of Auburn vet school for further testing.

Every source I have read in the past twenty-four hours since our suspicions were confirmed in a blood test says time is of the essence in treatment of EPM. While I do not want to subject Vince to unnecessary pain, I do want to know for sure if this is EPM or just a neurological problem. Also, it is important to keep a journal of good days and bad days to track his progress.

So, I will be starting a new blog, in addition to this one and my CATALYST - Guardian Rising blogs. While I will try to keep this blog positive and display my usual acerbic wit, occasionally my trials with Vincent may spill over. If it does, I ask you to bear with me. As with any writer, my personal life affects what I write. Believe it or not, it takes a lot of effort to be pithy.

With this I mind, I close with tonight's thought. Animals were put on this planet as man's companions. Our treatment of the animal kingdom in general is appalling, and I weep for the innocents sent to the hell of slaughter or gas chambers because of man's incompetence and cruelty. As a species we should be ashamed of how we treat the animals of the world.

No, I am not a vegetarian. However I do eat organically raised hormone free beef and free range chicken and eggs from chickens that have been fed a vegan diet. I also do not eat any animal with which I have developed a personal relationship or who are not meant for food, it - horses. Not everyone suscribes to my ideology and that's fine. This is America - we all have a right to say what we want. You have the right to not read this blog.

But I remind you of this - would you eat your family dog?