So far this summer (knock wood), the Boston-area Weird Weather has been unusually clement. We haven’t reached 90F more than a couple times (Boston proper didn’t get there till yesterday, but the official weather station is out on the harbor). Our daylilies have been blossoming at the ‘new normal’ time — it used to be a week or two later — but it’s not usual for the pansies to keep flowering this late into summer.
I think this variety is called Mimosa Umbrella; they’re blooming through a vibrant unkillable climbing mini-rose, Little Barbie.
T-Rex. This single bloom is more than six inches across.
There’s a perfect wonderful little micro-rose, Cinderella, half-hidden in the center here. When I filled the planter, I assumed the pansies would die back in the heat and give Cinderella more room to show off.
Meanwhile, I’ve only gotten a few handfuls of ripe cherry tomatoes, one Cherokee Purple and one (new to me) Bloody Butcher. The suspense is killing me…
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?
raven
Very nice! It’s too hot to even go out there after about 10! The addition is humming along and now I have to see if I can fix the HVAC next door in our rental without having a pro come out!
BillinGlendaleCA
Well, I didn’t have to water my garden today. We got a record rain today for the entire month of July going back 150 years.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: My valley peeps was all happy.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: That’s happening more and more everywhere. They say it’s because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which makes for larger rain events. I don’t buy it. Gotta be the chemtrails. And the Muslim Brotherhood.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: So I yanked the run capacitor out of the HVAC without discharging it. I’m alive so I guess I’m lucky. . . again!
Botsplainer
Sitting on tarmac at CVG awaiting takeoff of ATL; should be in CUN for lunch.
So in the Peoples’ Democratic Queer-Loving Homo Islamofascist Kenyan Sharia Socialist Republic of Louisville, this happened:
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2015/07/17/transgender-lmpd-officer-trailblazer-force/30319475/
Yup, a trans officer, readily accepted.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Ouch… That could have been bad. Myself, when it comes to HVAC, all I need to know is 1-800-CALL-HVAC. I just don’t know anywhere near enough to do anything more than damage.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Good thing you didn’t pull the flux capacitor.
BillinGlendaleCA
I think the iMac G4 I found will be headed to electronics recycling, the neck’s f’ed up(this I already knew) and all I get is a white screen when I boot it. I guess I could take it apart…
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, my usual guy came out and replaced one in my unit a couple of years ago and said they were not made worth a shit and were always failing. The unit was buzzing but the fan not running so I figured I’d try this. It could be the relay too but, besides the discharge part, they are both pretty simple to replace so here I am, waiting until the parts joint opens in the morning. Of course I didn’t come across the “discharge” information on the sites I used for the initial diagnoses!
satby
Beautiful garden Anne Laurie! I have small green tomatoes that seem to be in suspended animation, because they haven’t changed in two weeks. The last two days we got multiple inches of rain, the hear index for the last two days was over 100 and only low 70s overnight, so the current flowers may not set at all… I have not gotten a single tomato yet off of five plants. And my biggest plant was knocked down by the wind, and partially broken.
I’m going to try to root it, so I may have 6 plants soon.
raven
I had a few people ask me about discharging the run capacitors on HVAC equipment. I finally got a few clips saved up so I could make a demo of that.
First things first, I do NOT manually discharge the run capacitors on HVAC equipment. The reason being… you don’t have to! If the system has been operating normally, once you disconnect line power, the run capacitor(s) will be discharged in a matter of seconds through the motor windings still attached to it.
The only way to even leave voltage applied to a Run Capacitor is to disconnect a wire from it while it was running.
In the video I demonstrate that there is no voltage across the terminals within seconds of shutting off the main power. Then I do a demonstration by disconnecting the brown wire to the fan motor while it is running to leave voltage in the run cap. Then shut down the main power and short the run capacitor with a screwdriver.
It creates a few sparks :)
Note that the sound of the arch was so loud, that it caused the camera mic gain to be red
Baud
AL doesnt just talk the talk when it comes to gardening.
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Glad to hear Gov. Brown’s pray-for-rain plea worked.
Baud
@raven:
You have more skills than I realized.
raven
@Baud: That’s a cut and paste from a youtube with format fail!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Almost as well as Gov. Goodhair.
Cervantes
Beautiful garden, Anne Laurie. Thanks for sharing.
We’re up at our place in Maine, a full ten degrees cooler than in Boston. Quiet day ahead.
Reading Zachary Leader’s new life of Saul Bellow. Reminds me again just how needy Saul was.
Will get some — but not enough — writing done.
Pogonip
Where are you finding named variety mini-roses?
Betty Cracker
So, Netroots Nation sounds like it was all Netroots Nationish. TWIB got a shout out in this CNN article.
JPL
Anne, Beautiful garden! As Raven mentioned the temperatures have been quite high in the Atlanta area. I’m just trying to keep my plants alive.
@Betty Cracker: It’s unfortunate that Trump didn’t visit.
Joel
@raven: currently remodeling kitchen. Demo was done two months ago — the floor was a disaster, tile stuck to vinyl with mastic, set on splintering plywood all over the original pine (which unfortunately has too many holes to restore). Held up our contractor to wait for permits. Got those, now it’s time to get the guy back in the house!! Harder than it sounds…
OzarkHillbilly
Soooo…. My own garden continues to resemble Berlin-1945. Despite that, I continue to have far more than I and the wife can consume.
Tomatoes out the ass. Made six pints of salsa on Friday and only used up about 2/3s of the paste tomatoes I had on hand. I will easily pick twice what I have on hand already today. Salad/snacking tomatoes out my butt. The German Lunch Box and Tommy Toes have been a bit of a disappointment on flavor but not production. The Chocolate Cherry are a hit and I find the Mallorcan Cherries quite tasty. The beefsteaks…. Been eating Paul Robesons for lunch every day, Granny Cantrells are great on BLTs and the Ozarks have just now begun to ripen. I planted Green Zebras as my great experiment and they have finally begun to ripen. Wow. Talk about a spectacularly beautiful tomato, that photo doesn’t begin to do them justice. Today I should be able to find out if the flavor matches its looks.
My eggplant have exploded with fruit. We’ll have some grilled tonite and I see Baba Ghanoush in my near future :-) I planted some Listada De Gandia so my wife might get a taste of her Mallorcan homeland and we 3 or 4 almost ready. We’ll see if they trigger any nostalgic flavors for her.
Beans beans and more beans. Running out of things to do with them. The hot peppers are doing well with the golden cayenne a nice change from the usual red. The sweet peppers are just a waste of space this year. Sigh… Guess I’ll have to buy some. Dug up my red onions, a bit of a disappointment this year. The yellow onions don’t look to be much better. I’ll be digging up my potatoes this week but I don’t expect much there either. Too much rust to fight. Broccoli is done, I need to dig them out and prep that bed for the Brussels Sprouts.
I continue to do battle with the squash bugs. It’s a see saw affair. They pretty much killed the Zucchini but everything else I have managed to save… So far. Plenty of summer left. I’ll prep a hill and replant the Zukes for end of Summer and Fall.
7 am and the light is good. Time to hit before the heat kicks in (96 today)
mainmata
@satby: I was quite surprised at how advanced Anne’s tomatoes have gotten, especially being in New England. Here in MD, the tomatoes are fruiting but have also been in healthy but suspended fruitation for a couple of weeks. By contrast, the chili peppers, as usual, are gangbusters.
Elmo
@mainmata: God I’m glad it’s not just me. I have plants so heavy with green tomatoes I worry about every strong breeze, but so far only a few with color!
the Conster
You’re right AL about the weather here in Boston – it’s been a remarkably quiet, normal summer with a bunch of gorgeous days. Today is a scorcher, but we’ve been really lucky. I guess God punished us for gay marriage and liberal values with so much snow, which replenished the water table.
Scout211
Nice gardens, Anne Laurie!
I am very envious of gardens with beautiful flowers. Drought tolerant landscaping is just not that pretty. Sigh. I miss all those lovely pops of color.
The rain yesterday only made it up to Fresno. Not a drop up here. :(
We have already had two grass fires very close to our property. One that was 12 acres came within a half a mile and the one last week was about 6 acres and was stopped at our road. We don’t know how the first one started but there were people riding horses on the property at the time. The second one started from a car fire. Someone was driving out here in our little rural area and decided to park his car on the side of the road when the engine overheated . . .then caught fire. The fire jumped the road and started a grass fire which quickly spread by the wind.
Both fires were put out by local fire personnel and Cal Fire. We pay a yearly assessment for Cal Fire because we are in a rural area and only have a volunteer crew. It is well worth that fee, no matter what the crazy anti-tax conservatives say.
It is a scary fire season out here in parched California.
satby
@Scout211: My youngest son relocated to CA 18 months ago and keeps trying to convince me to come live out there, where I can stay with him, get a better paying job, and where he feels my soap business would naturally be a fit. But I can’t live in a place with almost no water. He’s in Orange, but has to relocate to the high desert because his job moved. And that sounds even drier.
NotMax
@OzrkHillbilly
Realizing it may be too hot for soup, nevertheless a really, really, really yummy creamy tomato soup with basil recipe.
Virtually knocked the socks off everyone when served up a large batch for a dinner party of 16. (Upped the fresh basil a bit from the original recipe.)
Obviously roasted fresh tomatoes can be utilized in place of canned.
MomSense
Beautiful garden, AL.
We had rain last night so I won’t have to worry about watering today. It is going to be in the low 70s and sunny which is perfect for working in the yard.
gelfling545
I just have one Amish Paste tomato & one Juliet. Both of them are pretty much stalled at the green stage. Two of my four yellow squash have died (too wet?). We’ve not had the heat we often do by this time of year in WNY and have had a ton of rain. It’s been pleasant for people (and mosquitoes & slugs) but not so great for vegetables. On the other hand my early spring basket of pansies is also still going strong, long past the usual span & most of the other flowers are quite happy. I did have to dig out my false sunflower plants as the got plant rust terribly & I was afraid it would spread. On the whole, flower garden – excellent; vegetables – meh.
Schlemazel
@raven:
I started life in computer maintenance & worked with a couple of jokers. One guy kept a big capacitor on his bench, it was fully charged but had a a shorting clip on the leads. The trick was that the lead did not have a wire in it, it was just the insulator with alligator clips. anyone that touched those capacitor leads was in for a real shock.
glad yours didn’t cause any real damage.
ThresherK (GPad)
Looking forward to gazpacho season. Native blueberries likely to be more abundant than the strawberries were this year.
PurpleGirl
Beautiful garden, AL.
Should be getting into the 90s today in NYC and it is humid. The City health department has a heat alert out and is telling people, especially vulnerable people — to stay inside and to stay in air conditioning. I guess that one of the complex’s community rooms will be open with A/C on for people who don’t have A/C units in their apartments. I have A/C units in my living and bedroom but have turned on the living room unit.
scav
Query, general. There’s some waste ground near a garden I’m working in that we were thinking plopping in a few natualizing agressive “nice” plants along the near edges to do battle and hold the ground agaist the real nasties that otherwise hold dominion. Nothing elaborate of course, there’s just enough of our own yard to weed. Combination Sun-Shade. There are some lance-leaves hosta splittings to put in the real shady areas, and I was just considering some day lilies for bright areas. Other suggestions or comments on same?
JPL
The darned bunny has been eating my sweet potato leaves. UGH
Gimlet
The US aviation giant Boeing says it has asked airlines to address a maintenance issue after a passenger jet’s landing gear panel fell off after takeoff on to a Shanghai suburb.
The sheet of metal weighing 60kg (130 pounds) plunged to the ground shortly after Air France flight 111 took off from Shanghai headed for Paris
Gimlet
@JPL:
Put some alternative food a ways away from the garden.
TaMara (BHF)
Awesome yard, Anne Laurie. Just beautiful.
Germy Shoemangler
@scav: hostas and lillies are a great choice. Hardy as hell. And they’ll complement each other.
April
My garden got tag teamed by animals Friday night. A bear pushed down the garden fence and pulled a few branches off the heavily laden with fruit plum trees. Instead of going back over the hole he made in the fence, he pushed through the gate and broke the latch to get out. The deer in the morning saw the gate wide open and told all their friends “breakfast!” The deer ate the day lilies and trimmed most all the plants along the edges of the garden beds until they found my 12 blueberry bushes. It was going to be a very productive year for the blueberries, my absolute favorite, but now I only have one branch that still has berries on it. Last year I got 14 pounds of blueberries, this year it was only 8 cups, or not quite three pounds.
I suppose I don’t have to worry about pruning the blueberry bushes this fall. :(
jeffreyw
@April: The good news is that at least you don’t have lions and tigers?
Pogonip
Anne, where’d you get named variety mini-roses?
ruemara
I love those flowers, AL.
@Betty Cracker: Fox outright stole their footage.
Also, “marched with MLK” is the progressive “has a black friend”. When someone has made it clear they don’t believe in systemic racism, that blacks believe racism is done and cannot speak to black people on the issues they deem important, they have a problem running for the Democratic nomination.
Amir Khalid
@April:
Oh dear. You have my condolences. Dang them critters.
JPL
@Gimlet: A bunny went after my neighbor’s habanero, once. Maybe next time I’ll intersperse hot peppers with my other plants.
Cervantes
@ruemara:
Feel free to elaborate if you get a chance. (Thanks.)
Germy Shoemangler
I watch my local TV news and when they reported on the KKK demonstration and the Black Educators counter-demonstration, the reporter said both sides were protesting the removal of the confederate flag.
That can’t possibly be right.
If the reporter is to be believed, both sides were in agreement?
It’s a sinclair-owned station.
April
@jeffreyw: You know,that is a bright side that I never considered. But wait, a mountain lion attacked a couple up the road just two years ago. So, I suppose I should be glad that I don’t plant what the mountain lions like to eat. When I moved here 15 years ago, I thought it was a prudent move to give my black berry vine eating Pygmy goats away. Those would attract the lions!
the Conster
@April:
Bears don’t like rhubarb.
rikyrah
haven’t I been saying this about the GOP….
that the reason Trump upsets them so isn’t because they think what he’s saying is WRONG..
It’s because he didn’t do it in FRANK LUNTZ-APPROVED LANGUAGE.
and, who do they have on tv today, on Face the Nation, trying to clean up Trump?
FRANK LUNTZ!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: I gave up on the Sunday shows, but I thought that enough people had pointed out how odd it was that: the Village didn’t bat a collective eye when Trump made himself birther-in-chief and was then recruited as a surrogate by the Romney campaign; racist filth spewed at Latinos caused a few tut-tuts and discussion of how this might hurt the eventual nominee; insulting John McCain caused keening outrage that woke the old gods. I thought some of that might have sunk in overnight. But clicking around the ‘nets, it appears the Broderist faithful don’t see a problem. And neither Cokie Roberts nor the ghost of Tim Russert can figure out why anyone’s talking about John Kerry or Max Cleland.
lesser question: I asked yesterday when I saw he was the one interviewing Trump at the Iowa Bible Bangers Fest: Didn’t Luntz announce after 2012 that he was done with politics? And was he ever part of the God Bothering Wing?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I made a google and apparently Luntz has announced a few times in the last few years his impending withdrawal from a process made too mean and too partisan by that awful Barack Obama. In 2009 and 2012 he talked about bringing his talents to Hollywood. This is summary of a longer Atlantic article by Molly Ball from January, ’14.
I think “my place to be intellectually challenged again” really means “availability of hookers willing to dress up like the mother from Little House on the Prairie and talk dirty to him”.
Kay
This is a state issue problem for Kasich that got immediate damage-control attention from his (now national) leadership team in Ohio because he is running for President:
Background- Kasich had to do something to pretend to regulate charter schools because the issue has reached “political problem” status in Ohio. They put forth regulations but lobbyists succeeded in stalling it and everyone went on summer break. In the meantime, Kasich appointed this hack Hansen who is married to his (now) national campaign leader. Hansen went before the Ohio lawmakers to report on charter schools and in violation of Ohio law took out the biggest schools, which are online for-profits and get an “F” grade. He said he did this because the online schools were “obscuring” the success of charter schools, but obviously all that means is they took out the low scores to boost the average. The state auditor (a Republican) threatens an investigation into why this guy thought he could leave out low scoring schools just at his own discretion and then present that as a real report.
So Hansen resigns in a hurry- he was gone in two days- and the Kasich campaign goes national with Hansen’s wife running it. Whew. Crisis averted!
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/states_top_school_choice_offic.html
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
I didn’t even know who Frank Luntz was, had to look him up to find out that he belongs to the political parasite class. Political consultant.
The GOP doesn’t like political loose canons, and the Trump Show is definitely out of control, even though he sounds like a lot of New Yorkers of all political persuasions, nonstop bluster.
Instead of worrying about how this might affect the Republicans, the press should be doing all they can to encourage more Trump Stump Stomp. They won’t have it this good again for years.
rikyrah
Mitchell: DuSable Museum fight exposes generation gap
WRITTEN BY MARY MITCHELL
POSTED: 07/18/2015, 10:00AM
A fight brewing over the future of the DuSable Museum of African American History highlights a troubling gap.
The generation that took a fistful of dollars and the sweat of its brow to build black institutions is finding it difficult to hand over the reins to talented visionaries of the next generation.
This dilemma is at the heart of a divisive dispute over the future of DuSable.
Theaster Gates, 41, is an installation artist who likes to take discarded structures and turn them into cultural artifacts. Gates is best known for the “Dorchester Projects” — two dilapidated buildings that he turned into cultural institutions on the South Side.
But Gates has raised the ire of prominent grassroots and cultural activists with a proposal to tinker with the black history museum.
In a proposal recently submitted to the museum’s board of trustees, Gates said his goal is to “increase the ambition and inspire a major conceptual shift within one of the most significant culturally specific institutions in the nation.”
The document, leaked to activists, led to the formation of a group that calls itself the Concerned Committee for the Support of Independent Black Cultural Institutions.
“We vehemently disagree with this shift in direction from [museum co-founder] Dr. Margaret Burrough’s mission and vision for DuSable Museum. . . . This brazen attempt to deliver the DuSable Museum into University of Chicago management must be immediately halted,” the coalition said in a letter July 7.
Among the names listed on the coalition’s letterhead are authors and historians Lerone Bennett Jr. and Timuel Black, Ald. Willie Cochran (20th), Conrad Worrill, director of the Jacob Carruthers Center, and Jackie Taylor, founder of the Black Ensemble Theater.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/780673/mitchell-dusable-museum-fight-exposes-generation-gap
Belafon
Check out the picture in this tweet:
The woman’s shirt gives a great indication of how much it’s about “heritage.”
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sheldon Adelson lives in Vegas and has his business operations there.
Politics, strange bedfellows, yada yada.
Brachiator
@rikyrah: What an oddly written Sun Times news story. Read the whole thing and still have no idea exactly what the dispute is all about.
currants
@mainmata: agreed–I picked tomatoes yesterday–first ones, and earliest I’ve ever picked (Principe Borghese). Today picked some yellow cherries I had missed, and two more of the PBs. Have a couple large green ones beginning to ripen, but others are nowhere near ready.
Anne Laurie–gorgeous pictures, and amazing tomatoes–I don’t know how yours are so far ahead of mine! What are the plums? I have two Jersey Devils–tried first time last year and they were terrific–and one other … hmmm Pozzano, I think? a couple small shishito peppers (looks like the plants will die before making any more peppers), a couple decent-sized green peppers which will become red ones, and huge poblano plants but no peppers yet (also 1 cubanelle).
Otherwise, no fruit on the eggplants either, or the tomatillos, though they’ve been blooming like crazy. I’m about to be overrun with basil, though, for the first time ever, so that’s great. And purslane growing like crazy in the same bed (along with about 4 or 5 potato plants). And a few tiny watermelon and canteloupe fruits on vines, though it’s looking AGAIN like I’m not going to get any zucchinis or pumpkins. No idea what is up with that.
Oh, also harvested garlic two days ago, and it looked better than I expected it to. I really can’t complain, though I am tired of feeling behind (planted black beans just last week, can never keep up with the strawberry runners, and don’t get me started on the half-finished rain gardens…).
elmo
@Belafon: It isn’t just the cringing fat woman. Look at the two Aryans immediately beyond Ab Fabulous, and it looks to me like they’re wearing Schutzstaffel insignia. I wish there was some indication of where the pic was taken.
ruemara
@Belafon: Her flinching terror of touching black skin is also notable.
@elmo: I believe that was yesterday’s rally for the traitor flag from yesterday.
elmo
@April: Bear country! When I lived in the Sierra, I had a bear literally tear the plywood siding off the covered back porch, because we had put trash back there. Another one tore the tailgate of my 1987 Jeep Cherokee clean in half to get at a tube of toothpaste that had fallen out of the groceries.
I called the bear control officer on that one, and told him to look for the bear with the minty fresh breath.
Where are you that you have bears?
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
The sense I get from out here is that the Republican party establishment is seriously afraid that this loose cannon Trump might just shout down the rest of the presidential field and become their nominee. He’s started winning the polls. Those candidates who denounce his crazy talk have not dared, or not managed, to speak as boldly as he. (Ted Cruz is actually agreeing with him, apparently hoping to profit when Trump eventually goes belly up.) The party establishment knows he’s dangerous, especially now that he’s started pissing inside the tent, but hasn’t figured out how to stop him.
Mike in NC
Frank Luntz is like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather”: every time he thinks he’s out of gutter politics, ‘they keep pulling me back in!’
ruemara
@Mike in NC: can we pull him under?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think the only thing putting Trump ahead is the fragmented state of the race. Carson and Huckabee are splitting the religious right, and shutting out Santorum. Bush, Walker and to a lesser extent Rubio split the Establishment/pragmatic/”moderate” vote, shutting out Kasich and Christie. Cruz and Paul are floating around out there I’m not sure where…
The big threat from Trump is two-fold, I think: 1) he doesn’t dog-whistle, he hog-calls– Birtherism last time, immigration this time (in both cases, issues the MSM only talks about in circles, because saying the racists are racist is mean and shows liberal bias). 2) If he gets mad and makes an indy run;. As things stand now, whoever the GOP nominee is going to have to run a pretty near perfect race to be competitive. According to a recent analysis, the R’s need half the hispanic vote, double Romney’s percentage, to win; they will continue efforts to shut out African-American votes, but people are paying more attention, and it’s a presidential year, so turn out in all groups is larger, I think. McCain and Romney won the white women’s vote, assuming HRC is the nominee, I don’t think that will happen this time. Walker is talking about some kind Constitutional amendment to protect “traditional marriage”, even among people who might be lukewarm on LGBT rights, talking that way makes you sound a little off nowadays. Taking all that in to consideration, a Trump run on nativism and anger at the Republican party would only need a couple of percentage points in a few states to make 2016 a Republican shellacking.
all that of course IMHO, rambling thoughts on a Sunday morning, and not to put too fine a point on it, a major terrorist attack between now and the election scrambles everything.
debbie
@Kay:
Will White Hat never die?
Is this incident separate from the charters’ refusal to provide attendance figures? I know there have been excuses like numbers weren’t “capturable” due to students’ “unorthodox” hours, but I never heard about any pushback.
All I know is Ohio public school administrators are fined, threatened with imprisonment, and stripped of their licenses, while charters, at least so far, have had zero consequences.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Saxby Chambliss should burn in Hell for what he did to Max Cleland.
J R in WV
That twitter picture tells it all, doesn’t it? Those people are barely humans, wearing a genuine swastika along with the Dixie Swastika flag.
And the would-be storm-troopers behind the people up front in the picture, they kind of make it even more unmistakable what’s going on at that celebration of hateritage. What kind of “heritage” those folks believe in too. Violent stomping people heritage, just like the 1930s in Germany. Or here, whenever black folks dared to expect some respect.
And these are the people Trump is talking to, aren’t they? Good work, Donny.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debbie: and he’s now counted by the MSM as one of the moderates driven out by the Tea Party.
Gravenstone
@Belafon: Screw her shirt, check out the SS wannabes in the second row.
henqiguai
@elmo (#61):
Don’t know about April, but we, here in north central Massachusetts, have bears. Among many other creatures. Helps that the Oxbow Wildlife Sanctuary runs right up (into?) town boundaries.
Amir Khalid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Regardless of why Trump is in front right now, he’s getting all the attention, and he’s gaining on the field. If he stays a viable candidate long enough to make a noise at the debates, or even win some primaries, he could do the party a great deal of damage with his crazy talk. It’s no good for the Republicans to hope that as the lesser candidates drop out, enough support will accumulate behind Jeb (or someone else) to beat Trump. What if it’s Trump who wins that support?
opiejeanne
Beautiful lilies, Anne Laurie, and your tomatoes are beautiful too.
Supposed to hit 94 today just outside Seattle. I have been watering all morning because I missed watering a lot of the garden yesterday evening. The neighbors are looking at me funny because I’ve started watering the trees. We’ve gone too many weeks without rain and broken too many record highs with these heat waves we’ve had all spring and into the summer.
My son flies back to SoCal in a few hours, fleeing the heat here; not expected to get above 75 where he lives. He would have left yesterday but his flight was cancelled and today was the next available flight to Long Beach.
Tomorrow is mr opiejeanne’s surgery. We had a little concern last week because of an odd EKG: the chart showed no little humps, just big ones. The cardiologist said it was ok to have the surgery, so we hope it works as intended and frees the pinched sciatic nerve.
opiejeanne
@Cervantes: may I ask what you are writing?
Maine sounds perfect right now.
April
@elmo: I live in Redwood Country, right on the coast in very Northern California. We learned early on to keep the garbage well hidden but we have these giant rolling compost bins that the Bears like to kick around the meadow when we put the plums that the birds half eat in them. I wish we could get their soccer on night vision camera!
ETA: spell check capitalized the Bears, but my guys are strictly minor league botherers, not a pro football team!
J R in WV
Here the DNR has done a great job of developing the wild game populations. A little too good if you ask gardeners. A neighborhood in Charleston (the state capitol and largest city at just under 60,000) known as Kanawha City backs up into the hills, just one mountain away from the Kanawha River there’s a state forest, some 12000 acres of mostly unbroken forest.
So there are bears who will drop over the hill into Kanawha City and cruise for garbage. The DNR tranked one bear who from her tag was known to have been in garbage can trouble habitually, so they took her to a wildlife preserve NE of the capitol up on the Ohio River.
Then they got a call from a tow on the river, telling them they had seen a bear swimming in the river, and may have driven over it. Finally the Ohio DNR (if that’s the right organization name) caught a bear in the Cincinnati area – with the same momma bear tag from the Kanawha City captures. They passed poor momma bear back to WV DNR, who took momma bear way up in the mountains to a bear sanctuary, where presumably she stayed. living the life of a bear in trout country.
We have neighbors who were wakened with a terrific crash in their basement – when Joe went down the steps, there was a bear in there, going through the freezer/fridge/whatever looking for whatever it was that smelled so good. Unfortunately, there was no way to get into the basement behind the bear, both the steps and the door to outside, where Mr bear came in, were on the outside compared to where the bear was.
No great harm done, they went back upstairs and put furniture on the door over the steps, which was trapdoor style, and decided to wait the bear out. Eventually he left, and now they do a better job of closing up at bedtime down there. I told them they needed bigger dogs!
We haven’t ever had bear trouble ourselves, but neighbors were seriously hassled by one, and eventually the DNR shot him as way too aggressive. He destroyed many bee hives first, a small therapy pool, then garage/car. several weeks apart, the garage was the last straw.
Living in the rural woods is nice, but brings its own set of unique problems unlike anything you might see in an urban locale.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Brachiator:
It sounds like it’s another manifestation of the ongoing conflict between the University of Chicago and the surrounding (majority Black) neighborhood. U of Chicago has decades of bad behavior to atone for before anyone in the area will see them as being well-meaning in any way.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@J R in WV:
Oh, we get bears in Los Angeles, and not just the more rural parts. Meatball the bear got his nickname because he was found raiding someone’s garage freezer when they brought some meatballs home from Costco. Glendale is a city of about 200,000 people that borders the city of Los Angeles on several sides, so definitely not rural.
He was caught in populated areas three times but was too popular for the state to euthanize him, so he now lives at a wild animal sanctuary near San Diego. They even found him a girlfriend named Sugar Bear:
http://lionstigersandbears.org/meatball
Yatsuno
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Bears are like any other critter. If the food is fairly easy to get they will go there as opposed to where the food’s tougher. Same with all the other predators out there. Have you seen any foxes yet?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Yatsuno:
Not that I know of, but I just looked it up and our most common native foxes are gray, not red, so it’s entirely possible I’ve seen a few and mistaken them for small coyotes since coyotes are super common.
The animal I keep seeing around are bluejays — specifically, either Western Scrub Jays or Steller’s Jays if I’m further up into the mountains. It’s getting a little weird.
Eric S.
I know this thread is probably dead but I wanted to throw out a question. I’m back from a week’s vacation and I’m checking on my pepper plants. The Anaheim came in great while I was gone. They are several inches long. However, the ends of the fruit a discolored, kind of brownish, and very soft to the touch. The plant shares a pot with three other peppers – Serrano, poblano, and Pimento. None of the other plants show any issues.
My first initial searches suggest a calcium deficiency. Any suggestions?
Anne Laurie
@Pogonip:
Not easy, is it?
The Cinderella is from Heirloom Roses (but ours is blooming a lovely shade of palest baby-pink, probably due to the climate difference between OR and MA). I’ve also got a few from Chamblee’s Rose Nursery, in Texas.
Bought the Little Barbie some 15 years ago, from a hobbyist at a farmer’s market in Copley Square. That’s what I meant by unkillable! It rooted from a stray branch once, so I’ve got two of them in the front row. And if I were a more ambitious gardener, I’d be rooting more of them every year. But we don’t really have room for more, and it’s a thorny little demon of a climber, which explodes in bunches of mostly-self-deadheading but sadly scentless little blooms several times a summer. I have to keep it severely pruned so it doesn’t scratch up the neighbors… or my Spousal Unit, who hates it with a passion.
Anne Laurie
@currants:
Thank you! Remember, I cheat by buying pre-started plants, by mailorder & from local nurseries (the stripey first tomato photo is a Vintage Wine from Volante Farms; I was pumped because I hadn’t been able to find any plants on-line).
The plums are Opalkas (if you mouse over, I labelled the photos). I don’t usually bother with ‘canning’ tomatoes, but I discovered by accident that while these fruit aren’t particularly interesting raw, they’re incredible roasted, for immediate use or freezing. And the variety’s tough & prolific. So I buy one Opalka every year, give it an edge-of-the-sunny patch position, and use the fruit for an extra spark in slow-roasted freezer batches.
Anne Laurie
@Eric S.:
Yeah, sounds like blossom end rot. I’ve gotten it on my (container-grown) tomatoes occasionally, when we go away on vacation and a plant that’s used to being watered regularly misses a few too many ‘drinks’. There’s a commercial spray that’s supposed to help, but with my tomatoes, I just cut off the unsightly ends of the lightly damaged fruit & use the good parts, and pick off/discard the badly blighted ones. Good news is, it’s not contagious — and your plant should recover to put out more fruit, if you keep watering!
Catherine310
My tomatoes are doing surprisingly well, given that So Cal (especially the westside of LA) has been pretty foggy for most of the spring/summer. We had two early volunteers, which turned out to be green zebras and Brandywine – two of my favorites. We’ve been eating them since early June. Others came in closely after, but I planted early too. (Cherokee Purple, San Marzano, about 4 other.) But other plants have not been as happy. The eggplant and cucumber just quit after the first few fruit. And Swiss Chard (which I know I shouldn’t plant in the summer) has succumbed to some kind of blight. (Husband doesn’t like it anyway, so ……)
currants
@Anne Laurie: Hah! Volante’s is around the corner (and up the road) from me, but I’ve never gotten my plants there. I’ve been ordering from Territorial Seed (plants)–and usually only from them, because it’s easier than trying to collect from across multiple suppliers. (And, let’s be honest, because if I ordered from multiple suppliers I’d have 40 tomato plants and there just isn’t room….) But I’ll look for the Opalkas–thank you!