Heating up

Friday (and yes, its Friday the 13th) we went back into the heat and humidity, with a projected high of 88 degrees F.

I’m not sure why, but while rushing to get to work, I forgot my belt and all morning was annoyed by my pants slowly slipping down. They are hard to pull up wearing my brace!

I stopped at Home Depot during lunch and picked up that soaker hose, along with some vegetable garden fertilizer and a grill bush (that was an impulse buy). Then I stopped at the Chinese take-out place next to CVS and bought a quart of chicken fried rice. I ate about half of it at home for lunch. I put on my belt and went back to work.

I had just got home and was changing my clothes when I got a call from Luanne. She and Riese were driving back from Florida (where they had been visiting Lu’s stepmother) and on the way to spend the weekend at Jake and Carla’s. We talked for a long time (I guess the ride was boring) about the weather, my health, etc.

I finished watching the evening news and then went out back (hoping it had cooled off a bit). It didn’t. But, I sprinkled a sparse amount of fertilizer in the vegetable garden rows after I hand weeded. Then I used the garden weasel to work the fertilizer into the soil. I don’t want to burn the plants!

Next, I unwound the soaker hose and laid it in place as best as I could (being tightly coiled up didn’t encourage it to lay flat). I used leftover plant stakes to keep it off the plants. Then I dragged out the regular hose, hooked it up and turned it on.

I had successfully used about 200 feet of soaker hose when we lived in St. Clair next to the hedge I planted. I buried it under the mulch I laid and watered the growing bushes religiously. I also showed my system to the new owners. I don’t know if they kept it up, but those bushes are still growing great!

But, this is my first time leaving it above ground. I am hoping the warmth of the sun and the water pressure will take some, if not all, of the kinks out of it and it will eventually lay flat. We’ll see...

I took the fertilizer and the garden weasel back into the house and then grabbed the camera so you could look at what I was talking about. I would encourage you to click on the pictures to enlarge them so you can see the water better. Since I was out there anyway, I took pictures of the two peonies that have grown at dramatically different rates, although I planted them the same and water them the same. I still don’t get that!

Back inside, I set the stove timer for an hour (I have no idea how much water the hose will put out in that amount of time, though) and then warmed up the rest of the chicken fried rice for my dinner.

I went back out and was checking on the placement of some of the water lines when Tammy, from next door, called me over to the fence. She said she really wanted to apologize for all the noise and partying during the fourth of July week. I told her it was no problem. She said she had been out of town visiting relatives in Tennessee until the actual holiday, but was told there was a party every night. I said, “Oh, that explains the naked dancing girls on the deck!” She laughed and said, “I’m being serious! Then on the fourth, we even had that karaoke machine and all the fireworks...”

I told her not to worry. It didn’t bother me and most of the time, since I was in the front bedroom watching TV, I didn’t really even hear them.

We compared garden notes and she warned me I was going to be getting a TON of butternut squash this year. They have a big, fenced-in garden that's in direct sunlight and they water it daily, so its doing much better than mine. Then she said to wait a minute. She went over and picked two beautiful 8-inch long cucumbers and gave them to me!

I went back in house for the night after shutting off the water. I did see where some of the water lines needed adjusting (and so tweaked them) but was a little unhappy that some areas of the garden were still dry. I’m going to have to work on placement and timing, I guess.

I watched TV for a while. I started craving a snack about 10:30 PM (I ate more fried rice at lunch than I did at dinner I guess). Then I had an “Aha!” moment. I went out to the kitchen and used one of the neighbor's gifts to make a cucumber sandwich my Mother would have been proud of (she loved those things).


I went to sleep at 11:30 PM.