This weekend I’m doing my big annual fall pruning.  A friend came over with his chain saw last weekend, and we cut down the dead tree.  It really opened up the back yard.  I’ve also cut back the tree/bush in the corner of the back lot, and trimmed all the honeysuckle back.  So the back yard is done.  I also trimmed the two large bushes at the end of the driveway, and pulled all the grass from around the concrete bench in the side yard.

The apple tree is going to have to go, I’m afraid.  It has fire blight again, and if I cut off all the affected leaves, there will hardly be any left.  So I’m going to cut it down.  So sad.  I think I’ll try citrus next.  The blackberry leaves are getting eaten up by aphids, but the almond tree looks great.  It doesn’t need any pruning.

Mostly what I have left is the front yard oleander bush, and the area around the A/C unit at the side of the house.  I’ll get the oleander done today.  The side area is going to have to wait until later in the week.

The reason I have time and energy to do these things is that the growth rate of the grass has slowed down greatly.  So I don’t have to spend every weekend mowing!

It’s November.  There are 22 days left in hurricane season.  We haven’t had a tropical system all year, but now Ida is going to rain on us next week.  Go figure.

The bell pepper plant has three small (1 1/2 inch) peppers that are turning red.  I’ll wait until they’re red, then eat them and retire the plant.

The broccoli and brussels sprouts still look great and are growing well.

The apple tree has slowed down in growth rate.  There are a couple of suspicious looking spots on a couple of leaves that look like they might be a return of the fire blight.  I still have plenty of copper solution ready if I need it.

The almond tree is really doing well.  Somehow, the “stick” has transformed itself into a fairly thick, short trunk, with several more slender branches that are covered with leaves and getting taller all the time.  I hope it blooms next spring.

The blackberry bush is slowing down in growth somewhat, but still looks good.

A friend came over with his chain saw yesterday and cut down my dying bay tree in the back yard.  The back yard looks very different now!  Much more open and light, which will be nice in the cool weather with the southern exposure.

The Fourth Commandment:

“Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.  Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you.”   -Deuteronomy 5:12-14, RSV.

I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a kid.  One of the things that struck me the most was how they spent Sundays.  They’d work all day Saturday, cooking and cleaning and washing, so they wouldn’t have to do anything on Sunday.  Then after church, they’d all sit quietly, maybe reading the Bible, but doing absolutely nothing else until the day was over.  It sounded like torture to me.

It used to be that everyplace was closed on Sunday; now almost no place is.  You can shop and eat out on Sunday just like any other day for the most part.  Our minister has mentioned keeping the Sabbath, and recommended that we try it.  Not necessarily sitting quietly all day, but at least not doing any work.  He also has suggested that we consider not contributing to other people’s work – not shopping or eating out. 

It’s interesting to think about.  I usually work in the house on Sunday, because I have to do laundry or something to keep up with the chores.  For instance, I spent just about all day yesterday “working,” and I didn’t get it all done.  So I have some laundry to do today, and I’ve already washed some dishes, and I’ve graded two quizzes in the online class that I teach (that’s the real work that I get paid for!).

But I’m working on it.  It would be nice to have one day just to sit quietly, knowing that I have done everything that I need to do, and I can just read or watch football or whatever.

It takes a lot of planning!

At the beginning of the year one of my goals was to lose 15 pounds.  Ha.  I’ve gained 9.  I’ve never gained weight like this – that is, this quickly – in my life.  I think it’s a combination of factors – age, hormones, medication, and lack of exercise.  And probably too much ice cream.

As soon as we get off daylight savings time this weekend, I can start walking in the mornings again.  Right now it’s too dark too late – the sun comes up around 7:35 this morning, and that’s when I have to be in the shower. 

I got signed back up with the Daily Plate yesterday.  It’s affiliated with Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong webpage, and I’ve used it to track calorie intake before.  According to their calculations, I should be eating about 1750 calories/day to lose 1 pound/week.  Yesterday I went over by a bowl of cereal.  I’ll do better today.

My starting weight is 184.5.  I’ll keep track of the results here.

It’s late October, and we’re still having near-record breaking heat.  This is ridiculous. 

I went away for a week, and set the sprinkler to run two extra days while I was gone, in hopes that the vegetables wouldn’t suffer.  And they haven’t seemed to.  I now have three small bell peppers on that plant; the broccoli is going great guns, and there is even one healthy-looking Brussels sprouts plant. 

The tomatoes aren’t looking too good, although the plant is still in good shape.  I’m not worried about them, since I didn’t plant them in the first place.  I would like to work on my compost, and the tomato plant is blocking that. 

I need to transplant a couple of the broccolis, for which I need some new soil.  A trip to Lowes is in order.

This is a day late; Blog Action Day was yesterday.  Oops.

Last weekend, I drove from Daytona Beach to the foothills of North Carolina to visit family.  I wanted to avoid the interstates as much as possible, so I went up through the country on US and state routes.  It’s a longer drive, but much more pleasant and much less stressful.  I got stopped for 30 minutes by the homecoming parade in Folkston, GA, which was pretty entertaining.

The route takes me through several agricultural areas.  The main crops that I saw were soybeans and cotton.  The soybeans looked like they were done.  The cotton, though, was still waiting to be picked.  I don’t know much about cotton, but it looked like it was a good year.  The plants were loaded with bolls. 

I also passed several peach groves.  The peaches have been picked and the trees have lost their leaves, so they don’t look all that great right now.  But the trees were good-sized, so the groves are probably successful.

Seeing those crops made me think about the effects of climate change on crops.  Peaches are a very localized crop.  We can’t grow them in Florida, because they need a certain amount of cold weather.  They also won’t grow up north, because they can’t stand too much cold weather.  Cotton, also, only grows in the south.  Cotton has to be processed a good bit before it’s in usable form.  Those processes are all set up to take place in the south.  There’s a cotton gin in my parents’ town.

As the planet gets warmer, it’s going to get more difficult to grow anything in Florida that isn’t a tropical plant.  My CSA farmer is already having problems keeping ahead of the heat.  It’s also going to become difficult to grow peaches in Georgia and South Carolina.  Will peaches be growing in Ohio and Pennsylvania?  What about cotton?  What about all the businesses that are connected to it?

Agriculture is going to be severely dislocated.  As everything shifts north, many of the fruits and vegetables that we are used to having locally will no longer be local.  Peaches will get more expensive if they have to be shipped from Pennsylvania or New York State.  Farmers will have to adapt.   It’s going to be traumatic for a lot of people.

On the bright side, it’ll be easier to grow citrus in more locations.  Orange juice should be cheaper, and we’ll be able to grow bananas in Florida instead of shipping them from Costa Rica!

Mangoes for everyone! 

Hmmm…

I got an email newsletter from my CSA farmer the other day.  He’s having trouble getting the season started.  Here’s an excerpt:

“The month of September has been one to test the most staunch of persons.  It has been disheartening, confusing, trying of the patience, and just plain misery.

 We had visions of being ready to open in the middle of October, but now looks like the end of November.  Everything that we planted germinated, came up, and got burned up by the sun.  It was brutal!!  We even tried to replant a couple of time, thinking that we just might hit it lucky.  NO LUCK.”

It’s been brutally hot here.  We set a record in Daytona yesterday of 93 degrees.  It’s even hotter inland, where the farm is.  And not only are there weather problems, there are “it could only happen to us” problems.  Read on:

“We have not found any celery plants, the place we got them last year had a run-a-way log truck slam through the building flattening it, so it is gone now.  That is the only place we ever found the celery. ”

And to top it all off:

“Carol and I were crusing the garden this morning for inspection and found that over the weekend some time we had a turkey attack.  It will take some time to know just how much damage theyu did but it was more than just a little bit.”

Farming is a rough profession.  It’s amazing that there are any small farmers left anywhere.  Support your local farmers!

Work has been so busy.  We thought it might be unusually hectic, with 17,000 students, and we were right.  I’ve been tired in the evenings!

Fortunately, there hasn’t been much to do in the garden.  It’s finally getting slightly cooler.  We’re going to have some more hot days, but not many. 

The apple tree is recovering from the fire blight.  There are new leaves sprouting in several places.  There’s some kind of small black bug on the leaves, so I have to do something about that.

I cut the fourth bell pepper yesterday.  It was a little rotted in a couple of places.  Maybe I left it on the plant too long, but it just finished turning red.  No worries; there are two more starting to grow!  This plant has done a lot better than I thought it would at first.

The broccoli looks great.  The leaves are big and more are growing all the time.  I can’t wait to see the flower start sprouting.  One of the Brussels sprouts plants is looking good too; the other one is still very small.  I don’t think it will do much.

I picked another tomato yesterday.  The last one was delicious and this one looks good too.  I picked a few more off the plant that had holes in the top, like they had something burrowed into them, and threw them away.  I don’t want any more unpleasant surprises when I cut one open.

The blackberry bush and almond tree continue to grow nicely.

Yesterday was the first day of autumn.  It’s hard to tell that here.  On the beachside where I live, it’s just as hot and steamy as ever.  On the mainland, though, there’s a hint of cooler temperatures.  When I left work yesterday, it wasn’t bad at all outside.

Also, the weather guy on TV this morning mentioned a cold front for the first time since last spring.  It probably won’t get here, but at least there’s talk.

I am ready for some windows-wide-open weather!

The apple tree is looking better.  I cut off all the leaves that were infected with the fire blight and threw them away in the garbage, and sprayed the tree with the copper solution again.  The main stem is completely leafless, but it might be able to continue to grow at the top.  We’ll see.

I harvested another tomato, and it’s finishing the ripening process on the kitchen windowsill.  I’ll slice it tomorrow and see what’s inside.

Bell pepper number 4 is slowly turning red.  It should be ready to cut soon.

The blackberries and almond tree are coming along, still getting new growth.

The broccoli sprouts look great.  I’ll transplant a couple of them when they get a little bigger.  The stems are starting to thicken up some.  I like this, starting seeds outside instead of inside. 

The Brussels sprouts don’t look as good as the broccoli, but one plant is coming along slowly and the other may turn into something.

It’s still hot, although the days are getting shorter, so I hope the tomatoes will continue to ripen.  In another four weeks or so it will cool off some, and the broccoli should really take off then.