Updates and Corrections

While planting the garden, there is very little you can do when you realize that you got the incorrect seeds.  That is what happened with our butter beans early this summer.  We thought that we bought pole beans and we actually received bush beans.  The poles looked a bit out of place for the bush beans.  It would have been silly to pull up the bush beans and try again with pole beans.  Who knows, we still could have gotten bush beans.  We are strongly considering another source for seeds next season.

Early this spring, we freed 1,500 lady bugs into our the Back Forty Garden and Park in hopes that they would attack the aphids.  Azaleas, evergreen trees and bushes were blooming so that there was plenty of nectar for the lady bugs.  Guess what?  We have not seen one single lady bug!  When we let them loose, the weather was a tad chilly; it was windy; and it was raining.  I would like to try again next spring.

Don't believe everything that you read.  You have heard that before, right?  I recently wrote about an electric pole saw and gave the dimensions directly from the manual.  Today, my engineering husband decided to measure the saw and it came out to be considerably shorter than I stated, only 8 feet.  It also extends only four (4) feet and not the six (6).  It is still a rather long pole.

Early this year, I made sauerkraut (fermented cabbage) and it turned out very well.  I was on a roll and made fermented carrots, too.  I threw them out onto the compost pile the other day.  I don't know what happened but I deemed them not safe for consumption.

Then there is the compost pile.  I add anything organic, even kitchen debris, to the pile except for sticks, corn stalks, and other large stems that will take a long time to decompose.  The compost pile has a tendency to mat when only grass clippings are added.  I avoid the matting by turning the compost often with a how fork.  It also strengthens my muscles.  Beautiful.

In one of my earliest blogs, I promised to take better care of my roses.  The roses that I planted for Valentine's Day are still living and they bloomed, too.  So far, so good; however, I lost one other rose due to unknown causes.

Then there is the name:  Back Forty Garden and Park.  Back 40, or some derivation of the name, is popular.  Do I have a Back 40?  Well, that is up for debate and discussion.  My husband kept referring to the Back 40 and I liked his explanation.  It may not be exactly 40 of any kind, but gee! as many times as we walk to the shed, to the garden, back to shed, to the house, to the pond etc., etc., we have surpassed whatever Back 40 is supposed to measure.  I should have named it Back & Forth Garden and Park.

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