A day in the garden

We got .6 inch of rain last night. Because it was hot, I tried to sleep out in the screen house by the garden, and Calvin accompanied me, but I awoke at 2 am and could not get back to sleep. The ground was just too uneven, no pillows, I was not basking in comfort. So shortly after I convinced Calvin to come inside with me, the wind and the rain started. Good timing. It was a joy to wake up listening to a long rain.

However, we could have used more. The ground is still bone dry just an inch under the surface. I'm hoping for one of those summer days when it just rains all day, and it stays cool.

We almost got an air conditioner today. If there had been a single air conditioner in stock at any of six stores in Duluth, we would have seriously considered it. So I guess the philosophical argument is moot. We live with what we have. We do have a pond with some righteous cool groundwater, so that will have to do.

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It was overcast in the morning, so it stayed comfortably cool (below 80) for most of the day. I took advantage of the cool morning to do some gardening tasks I had thought about all week.

Shouldn't a carrot bed look better than this, two months after planting it? I don't know why it looks the way it does, I just planted more seeds in the empty spots and zapped the rest with a shot of fish emulsion. That might repel the rabbits, who have been selectively nibbling on carrot tops.

Same goes for the parsnips, middle of the bed immediately behind the carrots. I filled in the empty spaces with carrot seeds there too. I also replanted my greens bed, hoping for the usual cool August.

I ended up with 36 garlic heads, 23 good sized and 13 small. After I was done in the garden I cut the tops off and put the cloves in this wonderful hanging basket I got from the thrift store. Best garlic harvest ever.

And, I am now experimenting with fermented dill pickles. I had put some pickling cucumbers in a bucket of water in the refrigerator, but for some reason I had to take them out of the refrigerator to make room for something else. So today I noticed there were bubbles on the surface; they were already fermenting. I changed the water and added vinegar and salt to help the process along.

I kept checking back with the online weather radar all day, hoping some of the forecasted "scattered showers" would dump another 6/10ths of an inch. No such luck, but I'll take what we got last night. The locals are saying this is the worst drought we've had in recent memory.