It was a hot one today. The high was 87-degrees. No air conditioning, fans running. The next three days are supposed to have a high temp of 91. Three days above 90! Yikes! Lots and lots of water for the critters, and they love being in the shade of the bee tree.
Today Tony went on a bit of a shopping spree. He bought the lumber and supplies to build me the two raised raspberry beds I had asked for. They will be eight feet long by two feet wide and (as of plans right now) are to be set up on the East side of the bunny barn. The yard there is not level though, so we may have to find somewhere else for the beds. I'm remaining open with my options at the moment.
Mail arrival today and yesterday have me feeling a little overwhelmed. Yesterday a box came with the Canby raspberry, Encore raspberry, and Edelweiss grape plants. They are all bare root and shipped with some kind of wet straw bedding in a bag. Today a bag came containing two dwarf hazelnut, one North Star dwarf cherry, one Weeping Willow, and 25 strawberries - all bare root. What am I supposed to do with all of these bare root plants during our crazy heat wave? Surely it's not a good idea to try to plant them all when it's this hot and it would be next to impossible to keep their fragile roots moist. Now I'm in panic mode because there's not a lot I can do this weekend when it comes to garden work. With no air conditioning to retreat to, and the outside spigot / hose out of commission, it's important not to overheat - and hauling soil amendments and digging holes and mulching, I can imagine is going to be hard work... Something that really shouldn't be done in 90-degree weather if at all possible.
The timing problem here? Tony works - a lot. He gets one day off per work week, which we usually spend running errands, and doing our weekly shopping. He gets every other weekend off, which is when we typically try to get projects done. Due to his grandma being sick and passing away, the last two weekends off have not been productive on the homestead. I'm OK with this, because family comes first, and I'm glad he got to go see his grandma before she passed away. That said, it leaves us weeks behind in putting the garden beds in and getting trees planted. It also means anything we don't get done this weekend may have to wait two more weeks.
Why don't you just do it yourself, you ask? Well, I would love to! Unfortunately, a handful of medical issues prevent me from doing too much on my own. I really need someone to help me, especially when it comes to hard physical labor and heavy lifting. To boot, I have a great creative mind and can come up with wonderful ideas, but my mind doesn't give me building instructions. Most of my projects are me drawing out a basic idea of what I'm thinking of, and Tony asking me a bunch of detail questions - and then him figuring out how to put it together. Great teamwork, but when he buys lumber and screws and then goes back to work, I'm left waiting for assembly. To boot, my Asperger's leaves me with sensory sensitivities. I can't use power tools or a motorized push mower because they're too loud and vibrate. Sounds dumb, I know. It's frustrating at best and often leaves me feeling like a real burden when I have all these plans and ideas, but am unable to just go do it myself. Smaller projects like winter sowing, or detail oriented things like setting up a fairy garden - sign me up! I'll spend hours enjoying being able to actually feel competent. But hand me a belt sander and tell me to assemble something, and I am completely incapable.
Tomorrow we are making a trip to Brainerd to sell some of the colony rabbit babies (who are now ready to go). While we are there Tony wants to pick up more lumber to build potato towers. And that doesn't even start on the lumber we need for the raised strawberry bed. This garden is going to be insanely expensive... But hopefully once it's all set up, it will feed us for many years to come.
I still have to figure out the asparagus bed too... Goodness, I think I've bitten off more than I can chew. Always jumping in with both feet I suppose.
New sprouts in the Jubilee Watermelon, Minnesota Midget Melon, and Hearts of Gold Cantaloupe winter sowing jugs outside!