Garden Casualties, a Painted Project, and a Canine Injury

 1.) Death of a Cantaloupe plant 

Several plants, actually. 

ALL the plants. 

I was so mad. I'd carefully transplanted a few seedlings from the mound that had been doing well, and in the process noticed that a few of the seedlings had died. There were these little stripy beetles crawling all over them, so I grabbed some homemade plant bug repellent made of hot peppers and garlic and sprayed my plants. 

Turns out, the little beetles were potato beetles. They eat nightshade plants, including peppers. By putting that spray on there, I basically added ketchup. 

So we now have NO cantaloupe plants, not even on the originally healthy hill, and a few hills of cucumber plants have died as well. I've mulched the remaining hills as best I can and made sure everything was watered, but there doesn't seem to be much more I can do. The "new" side of the garden was just dug this past fall, and the soil over there isn't great yet (our soil is crappy and we have to add a lot of organic matter to make it fertile), so I'm sure that was a factor as well. I'm just hoping the carnage is done for now. 

I replanted in a few empty patches in the "old" garden that has better soil, but we'll see if those sprout and/or survive. 

I also planted some more squash seeds. My existing sprouts have not been looking great...and I found a stripey beetle on one today (this time I crushed the thing while muttering curse words). 

2.) Spinach 

At least the spinach and turnips are still doing well (sans a few pinholes in the turnip leaves). We had a salad made of fresh spinach on Friday (with dill! After years of trying, I've finally managed to grow some dill!!), and I've been thinning the smaller turnips and adding the greens whenever we have soup or stew. 

There's enough spinach there that I'm thinking of freezing some, though we've been trying to clean the freezer out, so I'm not sure. I'm definitely going to try and cook with it more in the coming week or so. 

Chris was also able to get the drip line installed ((insert heavenly choir of angels here)) so it should be MUCH easier to keep everything watered and happy until I can get enough mulch in. 

3.) Painted Porch 

I got bored one evening, got out some house paint my in-laws gave us, and went nuts on the back porch. 

They also gave us some light blue paint, and I'd like to go back with that and add some accents to it to make the vines on top look more polished. Right now, it looks like it was done with the sun shining in my eyes while I used a too big brush...which is exactly what happened. 

4.) Creepy Crawlies 

This is what happens around here when you don't store candy, crackers, bread, or baking mix in either the fridge or a glass jar. 

The roaches (my husband insists they're actually "palmetto bugs") won't eat through glass, but they'll eat through plastic bags, paper, cardboard, or even thin foil. These leftover Valentine's candies were in a jar that I neglected to find a lid for, and I lived to regret it. 

Most stuff in our pantry is stored in plastic buckets that once held concession stand pickles, in bulk thick plastic coffee cans with sealed lids, or in glass pickle jars. We've sprayed for the things before, but they're resilient little...word I won't say in polite company. 

5.) Weird Sense of Fun 

Chris has been reading a book about how autistic brains work. Partially because it's interesting, partially because he occasionally works with autistic students, and in large part because one of our children is moderately autistic. 

In the back of the book, he found a copy of a "non diagnostic" test called the AQ test that measures "autistic traits" in adults. Most adults diagnosed with autism get a score of 32 or higher. 

Since we had nothing better to do, we took the test together. I got a score of 29. He got a score of 32. (He's been referring to me jokingly as "normie" ever since). 

We found a copy of the test online, sent it to a bunch of friends and family, and it's now become a running thing to take it and compare scores. It's been interesting and illuminating seeing how everyone compares, and there's been a few surprises. 

If you're looking for a way to burn 15 minutes that's slightly more sophisticated than those Buzzfeed quizzes, I recommend it. 

(If you're looking for another time waster, see how many of these "Gen-Z" rephrasings of Bible verses  you can read out loud without laughing. They're followed by reflections that someone obviously  tried to do a good job on, but I can't get past the "how do you do, fellow kids?" quality. It doesn't make me think of the things of God so much as it does that King of the Hill episode where Bobby gets into the Christian rock scene). 

6.) My Doggy's Poor Paw 

The other day, I returned from the school drop off to hear yipping that sounded like a dog somewhere was in pain. I looked around, and saw our new dog, Simon, standing up against the far fence on his hind legs, about two acres from where I stood. He seemed unable to get down. 

I walked over and saw his left front paw tightly threaded through the fence like it'd been woven in. There was a wire over the top of his paw too, and it was very firmly stuck.  I ended up having to call Chris at work to find out where the wire cutters were, and then try to calm the dog down enough (he was pretty frantic by this point) to cut him out of the hog wire fence while also keeping half an ear on the wandering toddler and her five year old sister. 

The poor thing yelped every time I snipped a wire and released some pressure (which took me awhile because I have weak girl hands and I was trying to keep him still and calm with one of them) and then he collapsed on the ground and just lay there when I finally got him free. 

On the neighbor's side of the fence. Several hundred yards from our gate, which is a few hundred yards from our house. 

So, entrusting the toddler TOTALLY to said five year old's care for a good fifteen minutes, I walked over to where he was, lugged all 50 pounds of him home, and deposited him by his water dish. He spent a good five minutes just drinking and then lay there exhausted. 

He didn't move much all day, and his whole leg swelled to twice its normal size. The swelling has gone down a bit and he's moving almost normally now, but I think we're going to need to keep an eye on him for awhile to make sure he continues to heal. 

Hopefully he doesn't try to chase us down the road and hop fences anymore. 

7.) Welcome Respite 

Chris's job has been hammer and tongs crazy busy lately between an uptick in student drama and having to work sports games in the evening, and I had a crazy week between a surprise doctor visit for one of the kids (complete with pharmacy visit and wait with two small children!), two late nights flying solo (one including taking all three kids by myself to an elementary school library unveiling, and the other entailing taking all three kids to a PTO meeting) and some emotionally intense drama with one of the kids (not the sick kid). 

So we were relieved and grateful to the point of ridiculous when we got an alert Friday morning that Chris's school had been cancelled for the day. Apparently a wind storm hit on Thursday night and downed enough power lines that most of the district was without electricity. The maintenance staff was asked to come in to help assess damage, but everyone else was off the hook. 

It's been a very nice surprise three day weekend. We've run some errands, spent some time together as a family, and just enjoyed not being in a pressure cooker for awhile. 

And that's the news that's fit to print for this week.