Chores and a Concert - July 14, 2024 @goldenoakfarm

On Sunday morning I was up at 5:30AM and got my post written and up. Once the cat was fed, I headed to the barn at 7AM to load the truck with wood chip mulch.

But nothing is ever as easy as it seems. I got the Kubota started but the hydraulics weren’t working properly, moving VERY slowly. I tried to load the bucket but it would have taken me 10 minutes for each bucket load. So I went back to the barn and tried to find the hydraulic fill pipe. No luck. Tried to figure out how to open the hood, no luck.

So I got the mower and the now empty diesel gas can and headed to the house to message Tom and see if he was up yet. No answer so I figured he wasn’t. I had a lot of time to kill so I dumped and washed the cat box. He called as I was doing this and gave me some things to check.

Fourth Fence garden – my husband’s phlox

First I had to check the hydraulic level and I now knew where to look. It was perfect. Sigh… So I decided to mess around with trying to make the hood release work on the dash. Then I saw it…

Next to the hood release was a lever with a turtle and a rabbit. (Kubota uses those for fast and slow.) It was orange and had an up/down arrow on one side. Hmmmm… not something I had ever touched…

So I turned the tractor on, pressed the lever from turtle where it had been to rabbit and tried the hydraulics. The bucket shot up! Whoa! Apparently it had always been set when I got the tractor in the past and this time it had been moved.

So I got the truck loaded, up to the house, walked back up and got the rider and push mower and brought them to the house, put in gas and oil, put away hoses, moved chairs and cleaned up the yard.

The New Herb garden was looking very pretty and colorful so I tried to get photos. But as I came around the end of the garden, I hit the forsythia whips that had gotten really long and obnoxious when I tried to mow. So I started breaking them off high up where they wouldn’t hit me when mowing. Then I went around to the driveway side and did it.

It’s not the way it should be but at least I could mow without getting tangled up.

So I wandered the yard for photos and ended up over by the shed.

The West Shed garden is going to be the next garden done. First because of these:

These are the planters I put all the daffodil bulbs in when we dug the iris bed. They will not last in there for very long and need to be in the ground. Second, the garden never got edging around it and the grass is moving in. and third, it just needs weeded and deadheaded.

So on Saturday night my brother went out and brought in all the smaller squashes on the platter. For some reason he left the big ones. So as I came around the house I decided to get the big ones out. They are pretty big. But I have this recipe I found for making ravioli out of strips of zucchini in place of pasta and they looked mighty good…

Whatever is eating the peas and raspberries has broken a lot of raspberry canes and the gourd had been bent on world domination. So I went around the fort to deal with this. Well, the gourd plant had gotten squash bugs so it wasn’t dominating much. But the melon plant next to it took up the standard and was 10’ under the slide to the fort. So I broke off all the vines and got the broken canes cleaned up. Now I could mow.

Amaryllis – 4 flowers

I got my zucchinis and as I headed to the back porch, I could hear a cat crying. I had thought I heard one when I had been over by the New Herb garden. When I got to the door of the porch, I found one pissed off cat.

I had shut the house up against the sun when I went to the barn and Larry had been down by the porch door where I couldn’t see him. He’d been stuck on the porch for the best part of an hour.

So I finally got everything done and sat down to wait for the grass to dry so I could mow. We’d had a heavy fog and it was really soaked. As I sat there, I got a call from a friend. She was calling to remind me we had a concert at 3PM this afternoon and she’d pick me up at 2:15PM. Soon it was 10:30AM and the grass was still very wet.

New Herb garden – Row 1, Joe Pye Weed, this flower is at least 6’ high

I finally went out at 10:45AM because there was no way I was going to finish all the mowing, but I might get the yard done. The mowers kept plugging up with the tall wet grass. It got hotter and hotter and the humidity just kept rising.

I finally finished the yard at 1PM and put the mower away and moved the chairs back under the tree so I could get my car in the driveway. Then I got a cool shower and drank quarts of water. After I’d cooled down I made some lunch and got the house ready for the afternoon.

The concert was lovely. The AC could barely keep up with the crowd in the hall. The performers took the time to talk about the pieces they were to perform and that always makes it more interesting. Once over, my friend and I partook of refreshments and headed home.

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Tom stopped by with a dangling dragonfly attached to his hat. It apparently repels horse flies and deer flies. I want one! It’s very pretty! His was green but they come in several colors.

He was to try to fix my external DVD writer. I think some cat has knocked it to the floor one time too many in his morning obnoxiousness. Tom didn’t succeed so he took it home and will try to either get it to work or find another used one kicking around his house.

One thing I had discovered is that all the weeding my general helper and I did the other morning in the New Herb garden walkways had been undone. There were weeds everywhere! So on Monday morning at 6AM I plan to be out there and get the first 2 walkways done so my son can get the mulch on them.

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I spoke with my intern #2 in the evening and she will be here (I hope) on Tuesday morning at 6AM and we will knock out the rest of the walkways. It’s to be wicked hot and humid here this week.

Once I get the walkways done, I need to call the agency and find out about getting my helper friend back out here.

Once the grass dries, I have to mow up at the barn, which is even worse than the yard was. I also need to do some laundry. That ought to wipe me out for the day.