Category: Back Forty

  • We’re enjoying a cool weekend, finally! Unusually cool for August 1, in fact. Yesterday Sandy and I tackled cleaning up the stack of shrub and tree prunings from the last time it was cool enough to work in the yard. I began yanking out ornamental grapevine and honeysuckle and English ivy and wild yam vines…

  • Sandy and I enjoyed roaming around downtown for First Friday. I had decided not to set up a table at the Indie Market for July and August. Of course, if I had had a crystal ball to tell me that the weather would be cooler than May and June’s events, I might have done well…

  • As usual, my garden runs behind everybody else’s garden. I do have a couple of little peppers and the tomatoes are soon to come. The lettuce is just about to bolt in the hot weather, but there are many varieties in that patch under the maple tree, so I anticipate that I will be able…

  • Ewww – 90% humidity this morning. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Fortunately I will ensconced (my new favorite word) in the studio with the little window AC unit. We try to wait as long as possible to turn on the central AC in the house, partially for sustainable living reasons, partially because we can’t get into the…

  • Whew! I feel sure that I overdid it in the Back Forty today, but the weather is cool and breezy and sunny and it doesn’t get much better than it was today in North Carolina. Sandy got out there with me, and we trimmed vines and mulched paths with cardboard and pine needles, and did…

  • What are these flowers called? They are my favorite flowers and must be an old-fashioned favorite because you see them in the yards of old houses around here. Theo is mesmerized by the sparrow cheeping just outside the window. He just realized in the past couple of weeks that there is an real outside out…

  • We were able to get some good compost cheap from our friends who bought a truckload of it. I spent late this afternoon spreading most of it and planting a few more seeds before the expected rain tomorrow night. I have to admit that I had a pretty lackadaisical attitude about these seeds since I’m…

  • Self portrait Pussy willow in the rain Dried French hydrangea

  • Divided and replanted about three dozen garlic youngsters sprouted from some forgotten garlic from 2 years ago. I think that they are a kind of hardneck, so I’ll have scapes in May if that’s the case! If not, they are silverskin, which I like just fine. Found some parsley I’d forgotten about too. It was…

  • This Saturday we woke up to snow on the ground. Again. Every frickin Friday for the past three weeks it’s been some kind of frozen weather. At least we don’t have three feet like our neighbors to the north. But everyone over the age of 12 seems to be pretty much sick of it around…