The weather here has been hot, hot and humid. We’ve had 6 months of summer this year, no spring. Rain comes in spurts of 3 or 4 inches in hours which don’t stay around to soak in and takes off with the mulch cover.

Since I’ve been digging, dividing and moving plants around I’ve ignored my other flower beds and the grass and weeds have taken over to the point I’m embarrassed for anyone to see my garden.

On the flip side our sunrises and sunsets and full moons have been spectacular. Thursday night one of my co-workers left me a message on Facebook that I needed to take a picture of the beautiful moon we had that night. I came out my front door and tried to walk down the sidewalk to the driveway. Between the weeds and the volunteer Profusion zinnias which seem to be hugging the edge of the walk instead of in the flower bed, I needed a machete to hack my way through. It was that bad. As I propped my camera up on top of the compost bin, I heard a low growl coming from under a Japanese maple at the corner of the house. Levi of all hooligans was growling at me, but he was too lazy to get up and check out the intruder. Bravery at a safe distance is his forte.

Saturday the mess to the front door had to be tackled. I parked the tractor near by and worked all day on the beds taking several breaks to get water and cool off. As I would haul a load down to the compost pile, I would take the long way around to and from the pile and my bagged pine bark and mow grass along the way. After about five trips I had the lower forty mowed. I put newspaper down around a new red Pygmy dogwood on the other side of the steps and mulched until I ran out of bags. Saturday I’ll pick up a truck load and finish. A couple of days later while watering my dogwood, I noticed some of newspapers were pulled out from under the mulch. I wondered …… the hooligans had struck again (at this point I was going to show the mess they had made, but I decided to put in another hummingbird picture at the end). They've been so busy chasing field mice in the garden around the greenhouse, I'm having trouble getting them to come and eat. I need to go and find out how many daylilies I have left or if I still have the siding on the greenhouse.

Sunday I took Mom on a small river boat luncheon trip for her birthday. Normally the Pickwick Belle is at Florence Harbor, but this month is in Decatur. Mom didn’t enjoy this trip as much as leaving from Florence as Decatur has the boat going by a lot of the industrial parts of the Tennessee River instead of undeveloped.

The next Tuesday I took a vacation day, slept late and missed WAAY televisions station showing my hummingbird video from my last Grit post on the early morning news program. Breakfast caught me sitting under the pergola watching hummingbirds while I ate.

Since I’m allergic to dew covered Bermuda grass, I headed to the barn after it burned off. When I purchased my John Deere 3032E tractor I purchased a quick hitch with it. After struggling trying to get the tiller on my old Yanmar I thought it would be a good idea. One thing I’ve found out is that the connection system for equipment is not standardized, everything has a different setup. The 5 foot Big Bee mower has a floppy connection on the part that attaches to the adjustable bar on the back of the tractor and would slip off the hook on the quick hitch. I have a short chain tying it down to a side bar on the mower. If you change from the mower to the tiller, you have to lower the hook thingy on the hitch from the highest setting down to the lowest setting. If I could find manual for my tractor, I could give you the name of the parts. I really like my tractor, but have two issues with it. As much as you pay for a tractor, you’d think John Deere could give you a manual on CD or let you down load it from their website w/o charging you. The second is that PTO thingy on the back of the tractor that the PTO shaft from equipment attaches to (note to JD, my tiller manufacture e-mailed me a copy of my manual) cannot be turned while trying to attach the shaft. My old tractor had a hole that I could insert a screwdriver in and turn the PTO thingy so you could easily attach the shaft.

I finally got everything hooked up by turning the tiller blades and checking the PTO shaft. Except one little problem, I couldn’t get the 3 point hitch pins to go down so the quick hitch would lock, so I started bouncing it lightly and it didn’t drop down. I bounced it down harder a couple of more times and the tiller completely bounced off of the hitch and landed front side down on the ground. Now what? I thought. Then I thought times like this I needed Dad and then it hit me that it’s been 15 years on this date he passed due to his smoking and I started crying. Finally I told myself that crying is not going to solve my problem, so I turned the tractor around and placed the loader under one of the pins and up righted it. No problem mondo and without a scratch on the tiller. After lowering the hook down to the lowest position I got everything hooked up and locked down and started digging my overgrown garden.

 Black and yellow argiope

After I finished digging I picked a few Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes and. The Yellow Brandywine tomato seeds turned out to be some sort of a large cherry tomato. I e-mailed customer service at the seed company and so far they are ignoring me. I’m going to send them a picture next and have them define what a Yellow Brandywine tomato looks like. You spend weeks growing the seeds and taking care of the plants only to get marbles instead of something big enough to cover a slice of bread. How can you make a good mater sandwiches out of marbles? BTW, I use honey mustard salad dressing instead of mayo and a little garlic salt on my sandwiches.

I decided to check on my watermelon patch. A month ago I had softball size melons and today I couldn’t find a trace of the vines or melons. The area is grassless and only contained this tall weed that looked like a sticker weed without the stickers. I found a huge Black and Yellow Argiope spider with a locust and a grasshopper in these tall weeds. The next day I again looked for my watermelon patch, nothing, my patch had been stolen, no melons, no vines. After all I have a picture of one of my little melons to prove it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. It was in a low area and several inches of rain in a few days must have washed it away.

Since the ground is as hard as a brick, I decided to water some of my daylilies that are the wrong color for my Auburn University orange & blue section by the mail box so I could dig and move them. Much to my surprise there was one of my missing watermelons and it had doubled in size. Imagine that. Now I have to worry about the mail lady or late night parkers getting it.

The garden area has gotten so overgrown since my knee injury and the over bearing hot weather. The hooligans have been so busy chasing field mice and rats that they were too tired to eat one day, even Levi. He is always ready to eat. The hummingbirds are really hitting the feeders since the flowers aren’t as plentiful, and my photography interests have changed to the flying flowers.

  Male ruby-throated

  Male ruby-throated

  Female ruby-throated

  Get away from my feeder and no one will get hurt

  Male ruby-throated

  Male ruby-throated starting to form his gorget (red throat)

  Male ruby-throated

Check out more hummingbirds and some of my late blooming flowers on my gardening blog: Hummingbirds and a Few Late Blooms.  

We finally had rain at my place for the first time in a couple of weeks 1.8 inches fell in one storm, and we had some wind damage.  A small birdhouse at the end of my driveway with an Auburn logo on it that one of the neighbors put up for me years ago was thrown off of the mounting pole by the wind.  I noticed it when I pulled in the driveway. I parked in the garage and picked it up on the way to the mailbox. When two wasps came out of it I threw it several feet away and ran for the hills. I still have a rash and a long red streak from my last encounter with the wasps a few days before. Later, I went back armed with a wasp spray that shoots up to 27 feet.  

It seemed strange not having to water everything. I chased around some hummingbirds for a while trying to get pictures and then picked a gallon of figs and got them ready for drying. I’ll cover the processing in another post.

After getting the fuzz off of the figs and cutting them in half, I kept hearing a rumbling that sounded more like a rock concert going on at the Al Music Hall of Fame than a thunderstorm.  As it got closer the vivid lightening started.  I grabbed my flashlight and candle lighter and read the paper while I waited for it to hit, and boy did it hit.  I have never seen lightening like that. After about 15 minutes the power goes off and my weather radio starts blaring that we were under a severe thunderstorm warning. Yeah right, tell me something I don’t know. I turn on the flashlight and started getting my old oil lamp collection down off of the shelves and from a couple of the iron wall hangers which are nice to have.  

  
Antique porcelain lamp. I found 2 matching ones in two different states 

I get a call on my cell phone from work. So I’m trying to hold the flashlight in one hand, cell on my ear and pulling the hurricane off of the lamp to light it with the other hand.

 
Porcelain lamp in wall hanger  

Then the weather radio goes off again that we have a flash flood warning; okay I didn’t know that from the rain pounding and lightening flashes on the skylight.  One of  modern oil lamps had a bad wick and burner and wouldn’t stay lit. I lit couple of those old fashion reproduction candle holders with a handle on them that look like something out of a Charles Dickens novel.   

 
Mexican finger lamp. This one does not have standard threads and burner mounts 

A couple of the lamps were made by a Mexican glass blower who didn’t use a standard burner mount.  For these types of lamps you can use a standard burner with a little modification.  Use plumbers putty in the screw cap of the burner and screw on the lamp, remove the excess and let harden.  One of the lamps had been turned into an electrical lamp.  A lamp supply place in told me to place a penny or marble over the whole and cover with epoxy.  I use  a clear flat glass decorative chip and use a generous amount of the epoxy and let it dry for several weeks. When I was sure it was nice and dry, I put about an inch of oil in the lamp for a couple of months to make sure it wasn’t going to leak before filling it.  

Antique lamp made for use in a wall hanger

Mexican lamp on left, hand blown lamp from late 1800s on right has air pockets in the glass.  The one on the left had been made into an electrical lamp. I repaired the hole and returned it to an oil lamp. 

I finally had found some lamp oil a few weeks before, but hadn’t gotten around to putting it in the empty lamps, so I tried that by candlelight. I finished cutting up the figs by oil lamp and got them on the dehydrator and pulled it in so that it would come on when the power did.  Why is it that you know your power is off, but every time you go in a room you switch the lights on?   I checked on the dogs and only Blackie and Levi were on the front porch, and I asked them if Patches was out or back in the barn. I didn’t get an answer from them. 

After an hour without power I started worrying about my orange sherbet vanilla ice cream orange sherbet swirl melting in the freezer and decided to save it from a sloppy fate and had a large bowl by the light of one of the oil lamps. After all refrozen ice cream is just plain nasty. As I sat there saving the ice cream, I wondered if my ancestors roughed it like this.   

After the storm was over and it was getting late I decided to take a shower by candle light and I wondered if this was how my ancestors living on the same spot back in the 1800’s cleaned up?   My soap dispenser was out of body wash and I got a couple of bottles out of the cabinet trying to read the label by candle light and couldn’t.  How did Abe Lincoln study with a little dim light like this? Then I realized I didn’t have my glasses on in the dark.   

A little after 11 PM, I decided to go to call work and ask them to call me at 5 AM in case the battery backup was drained on my alarm clock and go to bed. As I was finding the number in my cell phone, I heard a noise outside; it was the air conditioner coming on.   

The next morning my question about Patches was answered; there she was leaned up against Mom’s garage door. She couldn’t get back in after the power came on.  I turned off the fence and walked down to the end of my drive to get the paper and kept calling her. I have them trained to come in the driveway if they have gotten out. She just laid there in Mom’s driveway looking. I walked back to the garage to get a leash and when I walked back out, she decided to finally obey my command get up and come to the end of the driveway, only I had to walk back to the end of the driveway to get her in.  Who’s got who trained right? 

Patches snake bite infection has finally cleared up. Blackie is still on an antibiotic for her UTI. She was also started on a special food diet to dissolve the bladder stones she has. The first one was a canned food that she ate for a couple of days. I would give her half of a can in the morning and the other half at night. One morning she had one bite left and literally picked it up in her mouth and spit it at me. She refused to eat any more of it. That night I gave her the other half of the can, and it was “ain’t no way.” So I left her in the screen porch with the food. The next morning it was still there.  I opened a new can and put a couple of spoons of the food in her bowl and she refused to eat it. I called the vets office and they said they had some dry that I could swap for. As I got out of my truck Blackie practically attacked me for the food. She ate that fine for two days again and then refused to eat it even when mixed half and half with her normal Purina ProPlan. She would take a mouth full drop it on the ground and pick out her food. Even after mixng in a generous helping of chicken broth she refused to eat the medicine. After a couple of days of putting the bowl down and back in the refrigerator after she refused and repeated over and over again.  At the end of the first round of antibiotics it was back to the vet. She decided on another two weeks of antibiotics and a few days later was started on Uroeze as by now she’s lost some weight refusing to eat the medicated food.  Now she’s happily eating her food and getting a pill stuffed down her throat several times a day. She’s not happy about that.  

Weather here has been hot and humid. Spring never made an appearance. Figs started ripening just before we received several inches of rain.  I was able to pick a gallon of them for drying despite my fig eating hooligan Patches. Any ripe fig within nose reach was bitten off.  After the rains, most were soured and popped open or rotten.  Even the fig bandit refused to eat them.  I’ve been working on my Deshler High School theme flower bed, burgundy and white flowers. One of my daylilies going into the bed called Indian Giver was dug and divided, potted last fall and heeled in for the winter. The first couple of pots had fire ants in them, so I dumped them to the side until they swarmed out.  I pulled out another and a swarm of red wasps shot out at me. I didn’t know this old girl with a bad knee could run as fast as I did, and I avoided being stung.  I placed the pots in the loader on the tractor and went back trying to see where the nest was, picked up the couple with the fire ants and went back to the tractor. Hanging on the side of one of the pots was the nest. I put the others in the loader, pulled the nest off and stomped it. Hopefully the wasps will relocate so I can get the rest of my plants. 

 
 Male ruby throat at my feeders. Notice my hand made ant guard.  

Thanks to Samantha Biggers for choosing me as one of the winners of the Purina flip camera.  Oh course my first use of it was in the garden making a video of a hummingbird at my feeder less than two feet away and the Hooligans. The one of the hummer doesn’t have music added or has been edited; just listen to the hum of the hummer. Usually the hooligans are camped out on the back steps if they know I’m on the screen porch scaring away the hummingbirds. I was able to get the video before they found me.

I ran into one of Grit magazine's advertisers recently in Florence, Alabama. Robert and Debbie Dinges were in the bird supply section buying the red hummingbird syrup. Whenever I see some one with a bottle of it, I just have to speak up and tell them how bad the stuff is for hummingbirds and tell them the recipe for homemade. I mentioned that I was a blogger for GRIT magazine and the recipe was on a recent post I had done. Mr. Dinges said that he advertizes in GRIT for a product that makes digging easier, and – a bonus – it is made locally. I’m an advocate of supporting local owned business as well as made in the USA. Since I’m nursing a blown knee until I can have surgery in the fall I was interested. I’ve also experienced a season of plantar fasciitis in both feet, which also made digging difficult. I had purchased a shovel with metal foot pads on it, but it made the shovel so heavy that I used it just a couple of times and hung it up. I plan to donate it to the Tennessee Valley Art Center’s Ritz yard sale which supports the operations of the restored theater and education projects in the area.

After I got home, I dug the last issue of GRIT out of my purse (which I’ve carrying around showing off my iris picture on page 4) and found the DIG RIG ad and went to his website which stated the following:

The DIG RIG is a shovel attachment that is designed to distribute the digging pressure load on the foot, over a large surface area. It has a 3 1/4-in. wide lip, instead of stepping down on the shovel blade's narrow ledge you're stepping on a much larger area.

• Provides more comfort while digging.
• Durable lightweight construction
• Eliminates need for expensive footwear.
• Reduce stress on foot, ankle, knee, leg & back.
• Provides more leverage for digging.
• Saves wear & tear on footwear.
• Allows more volume per shovelful.
• Does not restrict hole depth.
• Shortens dig time.
• Attaches quickly and easily.
• Fits most shovels of all types.
• This product is proudly made in The United States of America   

I called a couple of days later and made arrangements to purchase and pick up three of the DIG RIGs at the Florence factory.  Two were for my shovels and one for my boss. I lost one of my two to a co-worker when she saw my boss's.  I got my remaining one home and installed it on my fiberglass made in the USA shovel. Mine has a large lip where the metal meets the fiberglass, so I loosen up the radiator clamps, slid them off of the DIG RIG and slid them down the handle and over the rig and tighten down.  I have to admit I was very skeptical that the DIG RIG would hold up to rough digging, and I had a week’s vacation to try and prove it.  I need knee surgery after gardening season for a torn cartilage, meniscus and ligament, so any digging is measured in how many prescription strength ibuprofen I take during a day of gardening. All week, I dug, divided and transplanted daylilies and iris into ground which hadn’t seen much moisture.  And man was it hot. 

I have to admit that the DIG RIG helps sore feet and knees greatly. Years ago needing a knee replacement on my right knee, I learned how to dig with the left one. It now needs surgery and somehow can’t relearn how to dig again with the right. I found myself comfortably digging with the sore left knee while using the rig and only used the ibuprofen sparingly.  Now I need to go by and buy one for my flat-bladed shovel.

My week off wasn’t all work. I’d work in the garden until late afternoon and then go take in several of the W.C. Handy Music Festival activities, including my favorite concert of the festival on Friday night.

I sat in a lawn chair for 5 hours listening to a different band every half hour or so. 

Where else in the country can you see some of the biggest names in the music industry for free or a low price admission? 

We also kept the local home grown restaurants busy each night plus the vendors at the parks.  I’m still stuffed.