The Beer Garden

Looks like it’s going to be about the usual — probably messy.  From the NOAA forecast:

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Saturday: A slight chance of showers, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 8am. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 81. Southwest wind between 10 and 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Saturday Night: A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 68. Southwest wind between 9 and 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

Sunday: A chance of showers, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 2pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 83. West wind between 11 and 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

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Of course, race weekends tend to be like Fair Week in that respect; once you’ve lived here for a while, you learn to expect bad weather at those times.  Though sometimes Fair Week only has a little bad weather, rather than the whole week … but even during a drought, you can count on at least some rain then.

Me, I’m just hoping the nasties hold off till after we do tomorrow’s yard sale running; it’s getting to the time of year there won’t be many more weekends for them!

Of course, when the yard sales end, the gardening catalogs for next year usually start coming in, so it’s not all bad. 

 

It’s been a busy couple of days here on the farm.  Not a great deal
accomplished, but it did get done, and parts will show later.

One of the visible things was yesterday, after doing routine errands and talking to Audrey and Carl.  I mentioned I’d gotten the blackberry canes I wanted to salvage and planted them, and asked Carl the best way to get the remainder out — I ached from digging the 8 canes, and really didn’t want to have to use a shovel or a grubbing hoe to get the rest (lots more than 8!) out.  I must admit I was half-hoping Carl would take the opportunity to use his tractor, and he did.  Rather more enthusiastically than I’d thought he might, at that, because while Audrey and I were walking over to look at the canes I’d transplanted, here comes Carl on the tractor, with front-loader!  Audrey was barefoot and I was still in dress clothes, so there wasn’t much we could do to help till Carl left to take the first load out back, then I changed clothes and grabbed some work gloves, while Audrey went after some shoes and gloves so we could lend a hand cleaning up the uprooted canes while Carl re-leveled the area he’d dug up to get them out.  The whole thing took less time than it’d taken me to transplant 4 of my salvaged canes!

I got the weeds sprayed for what I hope is the last time till spring — I won’t know whether I got everything or not for a week or so, since the stuff I’m using isn’t quite as fast-acting as Round-Up.  But I’m confident enough that I cleaned the sprayer for winter, and put it up in the shed till spring (or I find out I missed enough to justify going after it and then re-cleaning).  I’m also cleaning the rest of my gardening stuff to get it ready for next year, but I’m not in a terrible hurry about that.  There isn’t that much that needs done, for one thing!

Hand-washed the T-shirts I have the tatted trim on — after all that work, I’m not about to throw them in the washer and chance messing up the tatting!  Cooked up a lot of chicken we picked up on sale today; some will get eaten right away, but some will be frozen and taken up to the big freezer in the shed as part of the storm stash.  And so the last couple of days have gone — busy, but nothing really spectacular.