None of the kids are sick today, and everyone slept in to make it a truly glorious Saturday morning. Fair entries are strewn about the floor of the house, as the kids race to get a start on all of their art pieces. We have until Tuesday to get them into working order, as that is the drop off deadline. Crafts, paintings, drawings, glue and glitter. Glad I had those two or three days of a clean living room last week, as now it’s back to being a disaster area. I’ll be scraping glitter flecks off of the floors and counter tops until Halloween night. Not to mention any sludge from paper mache pinatas, that gets onto the tile floor.
On the upside, managed to get some paid projects completed this week. And started two more, but those look to be getting close to done. Which means I can turn my attention to the falling leaves, and my vacuum mulcher! Clean up the grass but put all that material in the beds to protect the soil and add all the lost nutrients back in. We have a small toad who has set up residence near our garbage bin box, so I think he was wintering in the deeply mulched leaves. Glad to have him/her around. Far fewer bugs in the box this year. I’ll add more leaves to the pile, and maybe next year we’ll have even more visitors about. The squirrels and chipmunks eat our tulip bulbs, like the little shits they are. But a rabbit or more reptiles and such wouldn’t go amiss.
We did not get any pumpkins to grow this year. A handful of gourds grew, but not much else. The Zebra tomatoes seems to have gone wild in the space. That took off and tried to spread out laterally. I should pick those so the squirrels don’t eat every last one. The two apple trees and Cherry tree that positively exploded with fruit last year, took a rest year this season, flowers but no fruit. Well, we had cherries, but the birds and squirrels got 99% of the yield. I was going to make a cider press because of how many apples we had last year, and this year? Not a one. I haven’t looked at the grapes. Not going to be much there either I think. I didn’t bother with potatoes this year, as I emptied out the compost box to fill up the front beds. It has yet to be refilled from household food waste, and garden clippings, leaves and bits of sod.
The very back yard usually get neglected a fair bit. I trimmed the hedge in the spring, and pulled weeds in early July, but abandoned it for much of August. In that time the Maple seedling took of, as well as an Oak tree, and possibly a Silver Birch. I’ll need to transplant those further away from the house at some point, but I’m not worried about it this year. I gotta do it before the tap root gets too deep/large. I’ll have to check which tree type gets a wide shallow root system, versus a long and deep tap room. I don’t want to kill either tree when I move it. I’ve had descent luck with transplanting trees over the years. Of the five I’ve done, four took off. One was dug up and eaten. I don’t consider that my fault. I think it was a rabbit. Would have got it had I left it alone anyway.
I need to get back to weeding the front beds again. Starting to look shabby. With that thought I’ll leave you be. Ciao Bella!
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