It's rain again

 We had a wicked rain storm again last night. Thunder and lightning and driving rain that sounded like hail.

I checked the rain gauge this morning and for all day yesterday and last night, we had 2.5 inches of rain. That's nearly 5 inches in the last 3 days. We might get rain again tonight.

This morning my squash seedlings were flattened and the leaves were pasted down with mud. The plastic mesh fence caught a lot of wind and  came loose in places - the peas couldn't hold on to it. All of the water highlighted the high spots with sand and low spots with silt. I can level things. Everything is very fixable and it's kind of nice to have a test like this so early in the season

It's going to be good. Hopefully it will be warm enough in 2 weeks that I can get serious about transplanting the peppers and tomatoes.

It looks like the brussel sprouts might be sprouting and the onions are spouting too.

Good stuff.

Wintery spring for a while

A few days ago, we were told to expect ice pellets overnight with snow this morning. It got windy with rain on Saturday. Instead of ice and snow, we got tornado weather yesterday. The temperature dropped from 78F yesterday afternoon to 36F this morning.  We'll have this cold for at least a week.

I didn't cover the outside transplanted rhubarb. It was a hard decision, but I finally decided since it can winter over, it could handle a couple of cold days. I have a backup rhubarb plant in my apartment. And there are 13+ plants outside. If all of them take, I'll be buried in rhubarb. Much will go to friends and neighbors. Friends will take the extra starts. I could probably start my own CSA.

The seedlings are blowing my mind. A lot of seeds started, but became too squished. I re-potted them last night, and it's a good thing I did. The root structures were long and spreading. It would have been knots in a few more days. I accidentally broke more roots than I liked. The look OK this morning.

I couldn't bring myself to thin them, so I'm approaching 100 plastic cups with up to 5 seedlings each and I'm not done. The cat is irritated about the time, the smell (soil is distracting her), and the space this is taking up. I am running out of flat surfaces and will start making an island of boxes in the middle of the floor so everything can get as much sun as possible. I only have 1 west facing window in the living room. The bedroom is too small to keep plants in there. Grow, grow, grow!

Good news! The garden is going to be tilled on Thursday. I have to buy another 200lbs of soil additive and spread first it so it can be tilled in.

Seedlings will be planted over the next 3 weeks then watered and occasionally cloched as weather dictates.

That's the plan anyway.

Hey Shorty! What's up Stretch?

My sweet peppers are too short. They are all under 14 inches. One has fruit and the others have buds. It just doesn't seem right.
I decided to check out the University of Minnesota site and I found a paper with basics about peppers. I think the plants are short because of all the weird weather we had - they need warm weather to grow and all of the flux, they just couldn't get in the mood. It warns, though, that high temperatures will cause the blooms to fall off. I haven't noticed anyone's pepper plants. The tomatoes are tall so maybe their peppers are short too. I'm going to water with plant food for the next couple of days and see what happens. It's over 90 again today so fingers are crossed.


The sunflowers are getting really tall. I've learned that the stalks are really tenacious. They'll do whatever they can to get at the sun and grow tall. They seem to grow from the ground up rather than the head stretching to grow up. One plant was growing through the mesh I've put up for the climbers. The "shoulders" of one leaf set were caught on a horizontal section of the mesh. The stalk kept growing from the base and the stalk was forming a "c" shape because it was pushing up, but was caught. It's free from the mesh now and the leaves that were hooked on the mesh died.

I have a clump of 6 or 7 sunflowers that are planted close to each other. I noticed early on that they were wrapping around each other to follow the sun and get the most sun possible. I put a large tomato cage around them to contain the stalks so they wouldn't fan out and shade the neighbor's plants. This has worked well. The plants are growing straight. They lean against the cage which reinforces it and keeps them all in check.

Four of the sunflowers are planted in a row on the border with Alexi/Valentina. They were blown by the big storm last night so they were leaning over the neighbor's plants. They are about 6 feet tall and since they are in a line, there isn't much I can do to keep them together. As a short term solution, I put a large zip tie loosely around the stalks, tied cord to the zip tie loops and tied the cord to a tall stake six feet away. There is a lot of extra cord on each tie so there is some flexibility as they grow, but I hope they will get back to straight, anchor well, and I can remove the cords. I'm mentally planning a Plan B, but no run to Home Depot yet.

Arbor

Now: brown = wood, yellow = mesh, grey = PVC

Anything in my garden has to come down in the fall and be stored until next year.Whatever stuff I have in my garden has to come down at the end of the season. It also has to be easy to store in a small mount of space. If I could build something permanent, I'd be rockin it out. I hope that the arbor, cloches, and my tools will fit in the garden shed. If not, I'll keep them in my apartment. Either way, I want to keep things small for storage.


I put this together in one afternoon. I planned on burying the uprights at least 12" deep, but soil composition and the tools I have made that  too hard. The uprights are 8' long, so they couldn't be driven into the ground. To help stability, garden stakes were driven into the ground right next to the uprights and they were bound to each other. This substitute was almost as good as planting the uprights themselves. Also, the whole thing is tied to the fence around the garden which my neighbor Alexi hammered in really deep.

My last aim at strength and stability was to plant giant sunflowers along the east/fence side of the arbor. The sunflowers could make things too shady, but I'll have to wait and see.

Center Cross and Top

Zip Ties are MAGIC! Only $5 for 650!

North Side

East Side

West Side  of the "Lean-To"

East Side of the "Lean-To"

Northside Climbers: The wind twisted things a bit.
Those two verticals should be lined up.

Having a tall arbor means I can "hide" things above eye-level.
My extra trim fence hangs from the top. No one noticed the
bird feeder for days - not a popular choice with everyone at
the garden.

June 17, 2010: 39 Minnesota Tornadoes in One Day

One year ago today, a huge string of storms tore up parts of Minnesota.

This house was picked up and moved by the storm. Those are
the front steps. The front door used to be right next to them. The
house moved, not the steps.

We're all very lucky there were only three deaths. The town of Wadena was hit hard - 232 homes of 4000 were destroyed or severely damaged. Farms were hit and emergency services had to follow the path of the storm from farm to farm to check on the well being of the people who may or may not have been home at the time.

That's the scariest to me - being trapped in your barn under stuff, being in a house without a basement - and no one knows you're there. There were stories of livestock picked up in the storm and found dead dropped onto roads and in fields.  Newly planted fields were wrecked with debris that would ruin expensive farm machinery - it had to be cleaned up before the crops were too tall, removed completely, and all that done without significant damage to the crops.

This was a house. The woman here was killed when the storm hit.
She didn't have a basement at her place.

I went to the closest coffee shop to use the Internet to find out what was happening in my hometown - hit hard with hail and less than 10 miles from several tornado touchdowns. Phones and cable internet may have been out, but "tethered" devices like smartphones and cell phones kept people in touch: who was accounted for, who was missing, and where is the flooding, hail, or wind damage.

So here's to good thoughts to last year's June 17 Tornado folk. You've made it through a year! It just gets better.

A funnel cloud dropping on a farm.

[Side Note: Solitude in the midst of life threatening danger is the cornerstone of the social phenomenon known as "Minnesota Nice" which breaks down to - never show negativity or dislike to anyone because at some point, your car might break down, you might be trapped in a snow drift, or a tornado may tear up your house, and you don't want the only other person in the middle of nowhere with you to dislike you. A society built that completely rejects "no" as a method of communication is a strange one, but someone will always hold the door open for you when your hands are full. You know you're in Minnesota when...you try to go for a walk and everyone stops to offer you a ride.]

Rainin'

Yesterday, there was a deep rumble in the sky that promises more rain than electricity in the storm that was coming. I'd been sleeping most of the day (thanks fibro) so I was glad to find a reason to go out in the rain.

I have no idea why people run to escape the rain. In a little rain, it seems kind of hysterical to run away from it. In heavy rain, one minute more isn't really going to change things; wet is wet. I've never been terribly particular about my hair or my outfit, maybe that's the rub. There is nothing about any measure of downpour that will make me run from it. I love the rain.

Today I had more energy than I have had in days. I had an appointment and ran errands (alien-abduction-like lost time in the craft/sewing store). First the radio talked about a freak storm, then I could see it coming when I left the grocery store. I did my daily garden check before the rain came, but I wound up scrambling to get the cloche back on the delicate plants.  The wind had turned wicked and I did not want to lose any plants. I've already lost 2 tomatoes to wind this year. Last year 60mph winds (tornado nearby) literally spun my bush green beans and pulled them out of the ground. Today, I didn't have enough cloche to cover everything - it felt like I was choosing one child over another.

I checked the rain gauge, and we had 2.5 inches of rain before this storm even had a chance to start!

The storm's passed and I can see the sunset happening. I'm going to go un-cloche the kiddies once again so I don't smother the poor darlings. I'm gonna check that rain gauge too.

No still. No quiet.

The wind that started yesterday and turned into tornadoes last night raged on all day today. Everything that could bend, including people, were being whipped around by a heavy wind from the south and the sound was constant.

I had to do some gardening today. I didn't get to plant anything yesterday, it had to go in today to take advantage of the warmer weather and the lack of rain today.

When I got there, no one was in the garden. Apparently 2pm is the time to go to be alone.
The trellis/arbor thing I put up yesterday was still standing. I added a few zip ties here and there to tighten things that I couldn't get to last night.
I hoed up weeds from between plants and loosened the hard packed soil.
I planted soybeans, sweet peas, carrots, and muscaline salad mix.
I moved around some of the seedlings to better spots.
I planted climbing flower seeds next to the arbor uprights.
I had to cover plants that I had uncovered a few days ago, the wind had them laying almost flat. Only one small tomato plant was broken on the main stem, but I'm still hopeful it may still grow. Some of the very small plants were covered with upside down 20oz soda bottles with the tops cut off.  I can't leave those on if the weather gets too warm, so I've got to check them in the morning.
I was able to water everything really well before the rest of the gang turned up to use the hose.

As soon as I came inside, I fell asleep.  I'd been fighting the wind for 4 hours and I guess it just wore me out.

The temperature has dropped pretty fast and the wind is calm. It's in the 50F's tonight, but it's supposed to be warm and humid tomorrow. I'm really glad I was able to garden today. Grow, baby, grow.

I'm thinking of tornadoes tonight. I'm watching a documentary on the tornado clusters that have happened so far in 2011. I was just in the middle of a tornado-struck neighborhood last week, but the idea of it didn't reach me until tonight. Last year, some tornadoes went through the rural area where I grew up. Farms were flattened, and rescue teams had to go from farm to farm to check on people's welfare because telephone lines were down. Livestock were pulled up into the tornado and then were dropped in fields and on roads. I guess the idea of a tornado in the countryside scares me more than a tornado in the city.

P.S. I tutor Zhenfang in English on Mondays and Tuesdays. We're working on verbs, but took a little break to learn some more idioms today. Two idioms were covered today - "Shut up!" and "You're pissing me off." She's not a shy gal, but I was surprised at how quickly she picked up "Shut up!" and "You are making me very angry!" She really liked it. I guess learning how to tell people off would be more fun than conjugating regular and irregular verbs.

What a day

I went shopping this morning as planned. I picked up some peas and soybeans at the garden store. I went to the hardware store. The temp raised 10 degrees in an hour and humidity was ridiculous. I took a nap.

When I made it to the garden, there was no one there. I measured and built the top portion of the arbor-thing I've been working on for the big climbing veg. I thought I was being clever, but I had some problems. It sounds easy. In my head it sounded easy, but the uprights kept twisting out of true. A neighbor saw me struggling and came to help. Then another. Both speak English well, but they kept talking to each other in Chinese and I was kind of left out. She spoke the best English, but even standing next to her, she couldn't always hear me speak - double hearing aids.  It got a little ridiculous.  By this time, I'd been in the direct sun for a few hours in 85F+ temps. I was getting a little heat-stroke-y: shaky, nauseous, headache.

We were going three different directions for a while. More neighbors came out, so a peanut gallery ensued.  There was a constant chatter in Chinese about the next step in building, but it did not include me. The wind came up, I felt sick, and no one was listening to me. Eventually everything that was to be upright, resembled vertical. Stakes were planted and tied to the verticals. I just wanted to get on with my life,
BUT
first one, then another neighbor and another came by pointing and made comments in Chinese and English mixed together. Collectively, the nay-sayerss were that the arbor is to tall, "unequal" (crooked), leaning, and that I was a fool for trying to build it on a windy day (it wasn't windy when I started).

As I tried to explain, getting more and more pissed off, Mr Hu came into my garden plot, grabbed an upright and started to rock it to show me how the wind would blow it over (loosening the dirt and rocking the stakes.) He started arguing with another neighbor (in Chinese) about how bad or good the structure was. Occasionally, someone would shoot me a quick translation, then jump into the argument in Chinese. Eight people arguing in Chinese getting louder and louder, trying to talk over each other, not a soul paying any attention to me. Yelling, arguing, and gesturing. I don't speak Chinese in the slightest, but I know the words for yes, no, good, bad, tie, cut, measure, and of course, I recognized my own name.

I lost it.

Speaking basic English "You must stop pulling on that Hu. I know it is not straight. It is OK" turned  into  "You are making me angry! Listen to me! You are really pissing me off! Everyone! Stop talking! No more 'bad Jennifer, no Jennifer, bad Jennifer.' STOP. HU! Stop pulling on that! It's not finished! Stop pulling on it! Leave it!" Zhenfang was laughing at me. I don't think she got it. I pantomimed covering my mouth and pointed at Hu and then at anyone I could make eye contact with.

I was completely soaked in sweat. My head was throbbing. I was pissed. I'd added crossbars to keep the whole thing from torquing. Everything was good enough for me to leave it. I packed up, came inside, rehydrated, and fell asleep in the air conditioning.

Two hours later, I went outside. Hu was there. He told me he thought the arbor was OK. (I think they started to understand how frustrated I was after I left.) Everyone else from the afternoon building saga were gone. I intended to get the planting in, but I spent my time truing up the arbor. Then it was too dark to plant.

Zhenfang came out to water her garden then went home. She came outside again, told me to stop because the sky was black (night). I finished what I was doing (she helped) and put away my tools. She handed me a bottle of water and threw an arm over my shoulder.
"You're a good friend," I said. We came in together.

I peeled off the gross clothes to get in the shower, but there was a knock at the door. It had to be Zhenfang. She brought me food - sweet potato mash and rice steamed in banana leaves. I love her!

The shower commenced and I hung all the wet, gross stuff to dry out. Oversized t-shirt, comfy shorts. Cat asleep on my lap.

I booted my computer so I could share these deep, deep thoughts, but Norton Security didn't work. A very nice man online fixed it remotely (LOVE)

Now, here I am.

The wind picked up. Thunder. Little flashes. I might have sunburn on my face. Rain - it would have been perfect if I'd planted today. The TV is beeping and flashing tornado warnings. Well shit.

I'm going to bed with my dinner, my cat and a puzzle book.

so there

Ooo... it's 1:01a, so it's a new day.

so there

Fourth Day

I just woke up and it's the fourth day of pain. By now, I know it's fibromyalgia. I can't always tell right away.
I woke up with pain, nausea, and anxiety. Part of the anxiety is my body's natural reaction with a fight/flight reaction.  The other part of anxiety comes because I know I can't make it go away and I don't know how long it will last and I don't want to do anything that will make it worse.
I dread the commitments I've made for today. I'm supposed to tutor English this morning for two hours. My student and her husband asked me to help them switch their checking accounts from one bank to another this afternoon. I feel bad about cancelling.
I was at the garden yesterday. I had woken from a nap and felt really good. I needed to water since the plants are so little and the seeds haven't breached ground yet. It was sunny so I thought I'd get too warm, but it was really windy.
It's sunny again today, but it was supposed to be 38F last night, so it's not going to warm up until this afternoon. I'm going to go cancel tutoring, take some Oxycontin, and vegetate.

Cold and windy again

I really do mean cold. It was in the 40's this morning when I talked to mom. The air is damp and windy. It's a tough change from the 80's we had earlier in the week. It's OK though, because the garden plants won't (probably) die unless there is a hard freeze or their stems are broken. I'm waiting. Waiting for the seeds to sprout, waiting for the weeds to appear. Waiting for something to do out there. It's easier to stay indoors when it is so cold outside, but this isn't going to last.

What Character: Valentina

Valentina is also my garden neighbor to the south. Alexi is her husband. She was not too thrilled about this picture being taken because it was cold and windy. She'd been outside for quite a while working on rows and rows of her little tiny sprouts, and trying to save her larger plants from the cold wind. I think she looks great. She's teaching me the Ukrainian names of the vegetables I'm growing. I love my neighbors!

Dad was here

YAY! Dad from Blue Earth this morning and brought me all kinds of garden stuff. Cold, cloudy, and windy this morning, but I laid out the stuff he gave me (inspiration!) anyway. Let's get dirty!