flyfisher51's Blog

August 2008
Aug 3, 2008 | 6:12 PM PST
Tag: August 3rd.

It has been a busy weekend. I had to sneak time in the yard between trips to Doctors, family and friends. I bottled my last batch of homebrew on Friday night. It should be ready in two weeks, just in time for the Philadelphia Folk Festival. I will be spending next weekend on projects in the yard and garden because fest weekend I will not be home.

The cascade hops are doing fantastic. I expect to be harvesting some within two weeks. The northern brewer are not flowering as aggresively as the cascades, but I have two more months of growing season left if frost holds off to October like it did last year. I planted two morning glory plants at the hop trellis to fill in space and they were going gangbusters. This week something severed the one vine 6 inches from the ground. I am frustrated. I resprayed rabbit and deer repellant today because my recovering cone flowers are being nibbled on.

I have squash vine borers! I went to harvest the squash that was not ready last week only to find two mushy  and rotted 6 inch fruits and a third that was starting to go.. No zucchini this week. I hope it is confined to the one end of the garden and does not infect the spaghetti squash. Up north we have but one outbreak a year. Hopefully the rest of the crop will do good. My grocer at the farm stand said to spread ash around  plants now and in the garden this fall. I shared my one ripe tomatoes with a bird this week. He ate an almond sized chunk out of the top.

I raised the one bird feeder another 4 feet in order to discourage the squirrels. I will also put a cone at about 6 feet up. I am able to take the pole apart to load the feeder neatly. I can also stand on my toes and be sprinkled with seeds if I load it without taking it apart. I purchased a cheap plastic hummingbird feeder  a few weeks back. Two weeks ago it was emptied. I found a feeder flower on the ground below it. I glued the flowers on last week and refilled it. I have not seen a humingbird on it yet. We left the house at 1:00 pm yesterday and didn't get home until after midnight. This morning it was empty. It was intact with no missing parts, but it was sucked clean. I will have to investigate. Maybe if I use purple juice I can check all the critters tongues the next day.

I built a squirrel feeder to hold the compressed corn logs and mounted it on the shed. It puts the food between 7 and 8 feet high. Maybe this will discourage the raccoons and  deer.  I did it this morning and by the time we got home tonight, about 8:00, the squirrels had discovered it. The chipmunks can get to it , but it will be an adventure for them. I do not doubt that they will get to it.

The morning glories on the side garden are starting to bloom. I can't wait to see a full bloom. The vines are so thick, you can't see that they are growing on a push lawnmower and a butterfly wire trellis. What I thought were returning convuluvous turned out to be returning petunias.

Hope everyone has a good week.