Didn't get it posted yesterday, but had a pretty productive weekend. Got the mess of weeds and "ground cover" between my neighbor's house and mine cleaned out - at least my half of the mess. Turned all of that soil over, by hand, with a shovel, and laid down grass seed. Hopefully it will take off enough that I won't have more weeds to deal with next year. I've only been talking about doing that for six months....

I also got the garden cleaned out after the growing season. It was something of a disappointment this year, despite my excitement over the corn. I must admit I didn't pay it nearly enough attention during the later summer. But, I've cleaned everything out except for some carrots and the pumpkins, spread a few hundred pounds of manure, and planted some garlic for next spring.

Things I want to remember for next year:

1. Get the seedlings started earlier, and get them in the ground on time.


2. Broccoli takes up too much space for so little return.


3. Pole beans, not bush beans. Much easier to deal with.


4. Trellis the cucumbers again - that works much better.


5. Let the watermelon grow until it's ripe.


6. Knock it off with the cherry / roma tomatoes - we never use them all.

At Hermit's request - a garden update.

The beans are done for the year - I need to rip 'em out and mulch them. Something came through and knocked over about a quarter of the corn - probably a tree rat jumping off the fence. I've been referring to it as my very own crop circle. Still, ears of corn are plumping up.

The cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen, and the yellow tomatoes are getting to a good size. My seed-started tomato plants are getting bigger, but haven't started setting fruit yet - I clearly waited too long this year to a) start them, and 2) transplant them outdoors.

The broccoli is beginning to form heads, the carrots appear to be going like gang-busters. Cucumbers (also a late transplant) are beginning to climb the fence, so I may yet get a few this season.

Or soon to be, at any rate. 3 pounds, 6 ounces of fresh green beans, headed to the deep freeze for later.

Now we wait for the garden to make more.

Six foot fence, six foot plus corn.

I'm playing catch-up today... Let's see what happened this week.

We had a very fast, very violent storm come through Tuesday evening. My huge maple was whipping around like a willow. There were a lot of big branches down around the neighborhood. If I hadn't had my tree pruned about two weeks ago, it probably would have gotten ugly. Despite having it pruned just a few weeks ago, we snapped off a large section at the top of the tree, costing me another $315 to have the tree company correct the issue. The power was on and off for the 15 minutes the storm raged, before ending in the "on" position - for 15 minutes. Then it went off for 13 hours. Fortunately, the storm had knocked the worst of the heat and humidity from the air. Unfortunately, the repeated power spikes and surges seem to have ruined my kitchen refrigerator, but not the attached freezer. Repairman will be out tomorrow to assess and hopefully fix. The upside to the outage is it pushed the wife over the edge - she now wants a generator so she can run, in order of priority, 1) her hairdryer, 2) the TV, 3) the refrigerator, and 4) the air conditioning. I can only shake my head ruefully, and go buy a genny.

Ron Paul has suspended his presidential campaign, and formed the Campaign for Liberty. I'm still voting for him in the general election.

My seedlings have been hardening off on the porch this week. They're still small, but I think they'll go out this weekend. A couple of new pictures of the garden have been posted in the gallery. Here are a couple:

I'm considering going to NTI in 2009. If anyone is interested, it's in Harrisburg around Memorial Day.

I had to swing by the Home Despot today, so I grabbed some of their transplant ready seedlings to hurry my garden along. One cherry tomato, one yellow tomato, one white eggplant (why not, right?), one basil and one dill. Nothing special, just some variety. They're all in the ground now.

We've had quite a bit of rain in the last couple of days. The garden has loved it - most of the corn I planted has come up, the beans are busting out, and the carrots have graced me with their wispy presence. Nothing from the pumpkin or watermelon hills yet, but we will see.

I assembled one of the Stag AR lowers I picked up a couple of months ago. I didn't take any photos - it looks almost the same as the last build I did, only with a fixed A2 buttstock. I'm planning on this gun being a match / varmint type gun, so I installed a Geissele Match Trigger rather than the Mil-Spec one. It's a nice two stage, set to 2# 6oz / 3# 6oz. I don't have an upper for it yet. It will be something like this - 24" stainless bull barrel in .223 Remington. I toyed with the idea of chambering this gun in .204 Ruger, but decided to stick to a standard caliber. I'll probably top it with the 3.5-10x Leupold currently on my PBR, and replace that scope with slightly higher magnification MilDot glass.

I started getting ready for gun school by transferring the ammo for the class from it's cardboard packaging into an ammo can, to eliminate trash and speed reloading. Turns out you can fit 2000 rounds of loose 9mm into a .50 caliber ammo can, but it is DAMN HEAVY. I tried to order another case from AmmoMan to round out the recommended 3000 rounds, but they're currently out of the 124gr American Eagle I like. I've got a couple more weeks to get it, but worst case is I dip into my stash.

My wife's off to Europe for work this week, so I'm on my own. Wish me luck.

I stopped at the big warehouse store on my way home today. Wandering down the rice isle, I was in the land of plenty. Clearly, the reported rice shortages of last month have resolved themselves, or people have forgotten all about their fear now that the next American Idol is soon to be revealed. Perhaps this would be a good time to grab a few hundred pounds more, hmmmm?

Speaking of food, I took a walk through the garden this afternoon. Sprouts have come up where I expect broccoli, green beans, and corn. I've got freshly harvested spinach in the kitchen just waiting for dinnertime. My seedlings are still on the windowsill, longing to make the move outside. The annual herbs have returned to life with surprising vitality. So far, so good.

... shoveling bullshit. Got a good bit of the planting done, too.

Carrots, broccoli, green onions, bush beans, watermelon, pumpkin, and sweet corn. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, as that big patch of dirt seems mostly dead to me. It probably needs a lot more compost than I've given it.

I got a hell of a lot done this weekend, and am going to bed quite satisfied. I managed to get all of the winter's accumulated leaves, twigs and junk cleaned out of the yard. I put down fresh grass seed where the dogs have destroyed things. I got the new garden area turned over. I got my spring spinach in the ground. I transplanted a bunch of plants for the wife. I got my peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers started in the basement. I picked up a bunch of canning flats at the grocery store. I found an appropriate box for the assorted small gun parts I've got building up (like this one) at the Lowe's. At under four bucks, I grabbed a couple. My batteries found themselves sorted into one of the boxes. Turns out I need more batteries. And, I started reading Boston T. Party's Molon Labe. Kept plenty busy.