LETTERBOXING - DOWN THE HATCH

I took this photo of Mathieu yesterday when we were out letterboxing. A friend has taken pity on me...or else gotten tired of listening to my whining...and started placing letterboxes in the area. 'Down the Hatch' was a great letterbox - the spot was ideal and the stamp he carved was really a good one. Today we are going to go look for another one of his.
Mathieu's letterboxing name is 'Garden Gnome'. The name was given to him by Zachary ;) when we went letterboxing or geocaching over a year ago. He just used his fingerprint as his stamp, and I added a gnome hat, facial features and limbs to it to make it look like a little gnome character. But now that he is more mature ;) he wants a different name and stamp. He is thinking about 'John Deere' or 'Horse Runner' or something. We'll see how that goes.

HYDROPONIC GARDENING

This may be what my fall garden will look like. Stewart has been urging me to get into hydroponics since our ride home from the airport a few days ago. It seemed way complicated at first, but I've been reading quite a bit about it online, and I think it just might be do-able for me. The 'no weeding' and the higher level of the plants does have its' appeal.
He said he absolutely doesn't want any set-up like this. Nothing put together with crap, discards or anything like that. He knows me pretty well.
Although I don't see what is so bad about this one that uses 2 ltr. plastic soda bottles.
He might not mind me having something like this, but I agree that the first one - his prefered set-up - looks better and is probably easier, although surely more expensive. Actually, I am pretty intriqued with the whole idea.

Stewart is really doing a lot around here while he's home. He has installed lots of things on our new computer, and is working on our old one to try to get it fixed for us. He put his fairly newly acquired house on Craig's List to be sold and moved off his property, contracted to get his land cleared, and our highway property along with it, and is now redoing my art studio. He and Zachary have been clearing all the stuff out of it, rewiring it, installing an air conditioner and will add insulation and new walls tomorrow. He also plans to put a cabinet and sink in there for washing paint brushes, etc. I absolutely can't wait until it is done, so I can use it! Hopefully everything will get done before he has to return to Baghdad. He sure is good to his mom. :)

100 DEGREES IN THE SHADE TODAY

... and it's been that hot for at least two weeks now. I've been doing other things besides blogging lately - gardening, online games, disk golf, etc. But today I went out and took some garden photos.
These are the zinnias I planted around the corner of the laundry 'house'. I love tall, large zinnias. I think they are about my favorite (non-wild) flower.
This is the other side of that corner. Patti-Jo or Carl has another big hole dug there. I had two rows planted, but they've just about eliminated the row nearer the wall with their digging. I try to keep pots or lawn chairs or something put there overnight to deter digging, but sometimes it doesn't help, or I forget.
Although it is turning brown and curling up now, despite all the watering it gets, this tomato plant started early in the season and produced a lot of tomatoes. It is still producing, although at a slower rate, and with smaller tomatoes. I don't remember what variety it is, but I am pretty sure it was just a hybrid of some kind from Walmart. There's also a Chinese Tallow tree coming up in the pot. I need to pull it out while I still can, but thought Mathieu might want to try transplanting it.
This is a German Queen heirloom tomato in a pot on the northeastern corner of the house. It is just now starting to produce, although it was planted within a week of the other tomato plant. The basil that is planted with it, has already gone to seed, as did the other basil plants all around the house. The red you see, is half of a soon to be (I hope) ripe tomato. The tomato has bulging quadrants and two of them are red, while the other two are still green. It looks funny divided exactly in half by color.
This is part of the area on the south side of the house, between the studio and the old gun shop, that I had - still have - covered in black plastic to kill the bermuda grass. I needed to plant pumpkins now if I wanted them for Halloween, so turned one end back a little, even though it was a little early for all the grass to be dead yet. Bermuda grass is almost indestructible. But I got the seeds planted, and they are up now...the ones the dogs didn't dig up with their hole digging. Today, I hope to cover the ground around the pumpkin hills with cardboard to help keep the grass out and preserve some moisture. Moisture is hard to come by here lately. The rest of that area is still covered in the plastic, and will be until Fall.
Then there is the artemesia. I think it is pretty chancey here anyway. Even though this only gets morning sun, it is dead. I am leaving it, and still watering it, in the hope that it may come back from the roots in the fall, but I'm not counting on it.
This honeysuckle went belly up just two days after we got the cattle panel trellis up and put it in the ground. I'm still watering it with a slow drip for long hours every couple of days. And I added cow and horse manure 3 days ago, hoping that might enable it to come back eventually, too.

NEW GARDEN SPACE

I spread this black plastic on a rectangle of Burmuda grass sometime after Easter. My intention was to kill that next-to-impossible-to-get-rid-of grass and make that area ready to plant a garden.

I took a peek the other day, and it looks like it's done a pretty good job in the month to month and a half it's been on there. I still see some pale yellowish green Bermuda grass that is likely to revive if I plant the pumpkins and watermelons there like I intend to, this coming week. For all I know the 'dead' roots will revive too. But I think I'll give it a shot since pumpkins planted in June will be ready for Halloween. And this is the last month I can plant the watermelons too.

DELICIOUS VEGGIES, SAUSAGE AND RICE

I got this recipe from http://beccasgardenspot.blogspot.com/. It looked like a great way to get lots of different veggies into a meal. I made mine a little different than hers, since I substituted a couple of things. Frequently that gets me in trouble, but this time it was really, really good.

Here's my version: Cut up 1 yellow squash, 1 Mexican squash, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 bell pepper and 1 ring of smoked sausage. Saute them in olive oil until the veggies are 'al-dente'. Sprinkle with red pepper flakes, file' and salt, then serve over rice. It sounds almost too simple, but we absolutely loved it.

Be sure to stop by Becca's blog and check out her version.

MALABAR SPINACH

I found where I had read about Malabar spinach. It was in this magazine - the March-April issue of Texas Gardener.

And it wasn't an article but a tiny submission to the Problem - Solution column on the last page of the magazine.

This sounds ideal for our South Texas climate, and I am hoping to get some Malabar spinach plants from Zimmer's Nursery in September, when they will have them again.

Here is a really good article in the same magazine about a gardener in Corpus Christi. If you can find this issue anywhere it is really worth getting. They also had an article on the Corpus Christi Botanical Gardens.

HALTER TOP AND MINI SKIRT

...On Coconut, that is. Yes, I am one of those strange people who likes to dress dogs in clothes. Coconut got a new outfit yesterday. I hope she doesn't look too much like a hoochy mama in it. Chuck dressed her in anticipation of her Post Office trip this morning.
I wish they sold more dog outfits in Patti-Jo's size too. But the dog clothing retailers cater to their smaller clientele. I may change these photos later if I get better ones.
I've been doing lots of gardening over the past couple of days and have much more to do for the rest of the week. My out of shape muscles are really hurting. So it'll probably be garden pictures and posts for the next day or two.
Keith, I had computer issues yesterday and now it's not letting me click on my comments to answer you about the Malabar spinach. But from something I read awhile back (Can't remember what or where.) it was my understanding that malabar spinach was ideal for our climate...that it would possibly grow in the off-season as well as the normal season. You know, it might have been in the article in the South Texas Catholic a while back about the Native American man in Corpus who grows a community garden as well as his own. If I find it, I'll let you know.