I'm beat!

I finished the mulching today while Bob was in Seattle. He's getting a second opinion on back surgery at Virginia Mason. The gravel paths turned out really nicely. Now we'll see what plants survived the move. I'm planning to plant irises and peonies too. You can see there are mountains of mulch and gravel left that we'll use other places. Bob already started a project at the back of the garage to use up the gravel. I have a couple of rose bushes to move. One is the climbing rose at the front of the house. It's growing like gang busters but is prone to molds in spring so I'm going to try placing it someplace with better air circulation. I bought a lemon cypress at a sale last weekend to replace it. Hope to get to that later this week. My hands and arms are begging for a break.

Almost done

The plants are in just in time for rainy weather. A little more mulch and rock should be put in today and the rest is up to us. 

This bed was entirely replaced with just a few plants. Should make weeding easier. I love the new table top pine.

The big juniper or hebe that grew in this bed gave up the ghost recently so that was ripped out and I put the Japanese maple that wasn't doing so well in its previous location to that spot. A large heather was removed to make way for a little rhody. The landscaper reused some plants from other areas to save us money.

This is the bed where the cement slab used to be. Now it's growing a weeping blue atlas cedar and a weeping hemlock with some winter heather and a creeping ceanothus.

I love the way the trunk has been trained on the weeping blue atlas cedar.

My beautiful Cotinus Grace was dying from verticilium wilt so I had an opportunity to rework the flower bed in back.

This is the new bed at the side of the house where plants removed from the front were planted. Bob wants to build an arbor swing in the center.

Three cuties, Gimpy, Timmi and Mocha.

Landscaping

Lots of bodies and equipment to do the work on this project. It should be finished today.

Around the house

A new landscape project started up today. The stamped concrete pad in front of the house is being ripped out to make space for a simple entry landscaping. Across the driveway the weedy mess of plants at the point (across from the cars in second picture) is being removed to make way for a new look. The plants removed from that area will go into the back yard in a new bed adjacent the patio that will connect the two existing beds. A few overgrown and diseased plants are also being removed so the front of the house will look much different. I'll post more pictures later.

Smoke again

Woke to a smoky world this morning. Top two pictures taken around 9 am. That second pic is the sun in a smoky brown sky. It's even worse now, a few hours later. Only the closest foothills are visible. Smoke is coming from fires on both the OR and WA sides of the Columbia Gorge this time. Fires in BC earlier this summer caused even worse air quality. My lungs hurt. Bob is struggling with a lung infection. We are waiting for relief from a stiff sea breeze tomorrow. Hope it brings some cooling, too.

Hattie doesn't care if it's smoky. She wants to chase the ball or work the sheep. Now!

Tomato plants that struggled early in the season rallied nicely and are overwhelming us with fruit. We're sharing with all the neighbors. Below is my puny red bell pepper plant. I bought it with three flowers and looks like all I'll get is three peppers, but they are looking nice as they turn red. Bob is getting a lot of jalapenos, but none of our pepper plants grow much bigger than when we buy them. Maybe because of poor soil or cool soil temperatures even though they're growing in the greenhouse - but surely these plants would be larger under different conditions? 

Countdown to surgery

I am disappointed to tell that I am not able to get gel injections in my knees. My primary care X-rays didn't show the full picture. I have patellarfemoral arthritis and there is no cartilage under my kneecaps. The hyaluronic gel and a few other treatments require some space between bones but I have none. It's bone on bone. I got a cortisone shot in one knee and will try physical therapy to strengthen my quadriceps, but the orthopedic doctor made it pretty clear knee replacements will be needed. Dang. I was hoping to avoid that. But he assured me he could get me back to hiking again. I go back in three months to see how things are doing.

Minis

A young couple, doctor and wife, bought the big house with five nice acres just down the road from us and they have... ta da!... two mini horses! They fit into the neighborhood perfectly with the mini cows across the road and two alpacas just north of them.

Cuteness to start the day

Shoveling shit in the pen this morning this made me put down the shovel and run for the camera.

A sparrow, I guess. Little thing clung to his wool while Gimpy pondered what was hanging on his back and what to do about it. Eventually he just went back to eating, the bird dropped off and hopped around on the ground avoiding the hooves of the curious sheep before flying off. So cute.

I made a few more poppies before it dawned on me that this is porcelain paper clay and may react like porcelain in the glaze fire. Doh! I'm going to finish firing these before committing to making more in case they warp and end up little more than a mess in the kiln. Wish me luck.

An Expensive Toenail

Hattie cracked a dewclaw nail while herding sheep a few days ago, the second time this summer. It was pretty painful and starting to look red all around so a visit to the vet was in order. Last time a tech was able to nip the nail off without need to see the vet, saving a lot of money.  I took her in yesterday hoping for the same but it turned into a bigger thing than expected. The crack went all the way up the nail under the skin with inflammation all around it. So the hoped for simple clip turned into a mini surgery requiring sedation to cut out the whole nail, and along with a round of antibiotics and pain meds to jack up the cost it put us back over two hundred dollars. She did get a cute bandage in the deal though. I can remove that Monday if she resists tearing it off this weekend. An Elizabethan collar was prescribed but I'm holding off as long as possible. While I recognize the need for their use, these collars are awful devices to put on an animal that doesn't understand the why of it or that it is only temporary. 

Here is Tux looking more alert already after going back to antifungals twice a day. With both dogs needing multiple meds twice a day I am hard pressed to keep them all straight. 

Tux vs The Fungus

Tux's Fluconazole dose was reduced to once a day, per her AZ vet, three months ago. Her cocci titer had been stable at 1:8 for quite a while and the vet hoped she had stabilized. But the last month I've noticed weird stools full of mucus and that she is looking askance at food again, just like when she was sick. I feared the worst and indeed, her titer has risen to 1:32 since stopping the evening dose of meds. It appears her immune system is incapable of fighting this strain of Valley Fever fungus. She requires a high dose of antifungals to do all the work. I've added the second dose back and am awaiting further instructions from the AZ vet. Poor Tux will never be free of this awful fungus.

Other pictures

Some Walla Walla sweet onions drying next to our Bolt EV. We fill 'er up in the garage!

I guess we're warding off vampires (or is it werewolves?) in the garage. Garlic and onions will go into everything I cook for a while. I've already frozen some pesto but my basil hasn't grown very well so I won't be making as much as I like. I grew a variety called Pesto Perpetuo last year and loved it. It has varigated leaves and doesn't flower so just grows and grows for abundant harvests but it wasn't offered at any nurseries this year. Couldn't find seed sold online either. So I'm growing five different kinds of basil this year and so far I'm happiest with the Thai variety. One variety has big ruffly green leaves, one is purple, one is the usual cooking variety sold at groceries and one is purple/green with hairy leaves that aren't too great for eating, imho. 

As far as the garden goes there were some successes, some failures. I found a way to protect the outside plants from the rats and had some nice veggies but the tomatoes have been hugely disappointing with blossom end rot. I'm finally getting good fruit out of the Roma plant but the San Marzano isn't responding to my efforts to give it calcium and most of the fruit is going to the ducks. The Cherokee Purples, our favorite tomato, are starting to ripen with the two plants fully in ground looking much better than the two still partially contained in the soil bags. 

Raspberries are maxed out and slowing down while two of the blueberry plants are starting to ripen. The other two blueberries suffered winter damage and produced only a few small berries. The raspberries are spreading so aggressively throughout the garden that I'm entertaining thoughts of moving the veggie beds somewhere far from them. Their roots have infiltrated the asparagus bed and after the winter damage they suffered I think we'll never enjoy an asparagus crop.

It's been uncomfortably hot and smoke from the fires in British Columbia is thick in the air so I'm not working the sheep or Hattie. She's a very disappointed dog.

 I've been working on clay projects and was dripping sweat today - not nearly as bad as in Arizona but still uncomfortable with the high humidity. I'm making garden art - poppies and seed heads - experimenting with porcelain (too fragile, floppy and will probably melt in the firing), iron stoneware (good for the poppy heads but not the look I want for the flowers), and finally settled on a paper clay that is smooth, white and allows me to build the different flower parts without quickly drying and cracking or flopping. Now how many flowers will I get out of 25 pounds of paper clay?

Poppy seed heads

Poppies and pot

Currant Jelly

Well, I got 3.5 half pint jars of jelly out of all those currants. The juice from the berries was thick  - I expected something thinner, more watery, and the jelly seems a bit heavy and sticky after cooking it to sheeting point. This was my first attempt at determining cooking stage by the way the solution sheets off a spoon and I may have overdone it a bit. The half jar I opened wasn't completely cooled so it might be different tomorrow. It definitely tastes like currants and looks pretty enough. Just not the way I expected. Maybe I'll try again next year since most of this year's berries have been picked.

Or maybe not.