I Love To Go A Gardening
Growing Our Life in Northern Michigan
Weathered Work
I am aware that I often begin my posts with a description of our weather. That’s because the weather greatly affects what we do that day. Sunny and cool means more outside tasks, warm and humid is torturous, rain equals coziness, heavy snow means I’ll be outside snowblowing the driveway. Weather also affects what we wear: t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, or winter coats. You get the idea, I’m sure. Rain was forecasted for every day this week–and into this weekend–with percentages that kept changing downward. However, although we had some cloudy days, mostly the rain did not appear–either going around us or dissipating altogether. It did rain lightly during a night or two, and it is raining now, which means a cozy day of indoor tasks.
I heard that southern Michigan had severe storms on Tuesday with a possible tornado or two. When that storm moved through, the temperature turned much cooler, even for us in the north, with highs in the 50s or 60s (F) and overnight lows in the 40s. Definitely jacket weather.
Autumn seemed to have taken forever to arrive, but suddenly it is here, and now I feel as if winter will arrive before we get all out projects completed. Every year we never seem to finish everything we hope to get done, but we just shrug and say “We get done what we get done.” Every year we complete a few more projects than we did the year before.
The chickens leaped into our strawberry patch, which is in an old unusable hot tub that the previous owners of our house left behind. They scratched some of the straw out, exposing the plants, so I put wire fencing around the hot tub. I did it quickly in the evening and actually need to go out and do it more thoroughly but it was enough that the chickens aren’t going into the hot tub anymore. When I cover the other plants, I will put more straw on the strawberries. I also need to put fencing around the raised garden bed with the beets in it. They ate the tops. The chickens seemed to leave every planter alone that is surrounded by the fencing.
We still have to buy another roll of 7ft wire fencing to put around the apple trees to protect them from the deer. We hope to buy it after next payday.
On Tuesday the gravel guy arrived with a dump truck-load of gravel for our driveway. Two years ago the gravel was dumped out in piles–I think because our driveway was in such rough shape that we had to shovel the gravel along the edges where we needed it. This time the guy simply opened the tailgate and elevate the truck bed so it slowly dumped out the gravel as he drove down the driveway. It was done so skillfully that I didn’t have to shovel the gravel. I just had to rake it out a little. I’m really glad I didn’t have to shovel it since that would be tons of work. It would be even better if we had a grader to smooth it out, but we don’t, and it’s not bad the way it is. I think we could use another truckload for the bottom half of the driveway. Maybe we can still do it, but it’s not terrible if we can’t.
Kyle, the guy who brought the gravel is the son of the guy who owns the company. He had delivered most of our gravel two years ago. I was surprised that he remembered us. He said that when he heard we were ordering gravel again, he eagerly volunteered to bring it to us. “Most of our customers are not very pleasant,” he said, “but not you. You are good people. You are very good people.” That was a spirit-lifter. Kyle had brought us our potato stones two years ago at a reduced price. Those are the stones I’m using for my dams. He told me to let him know if we needed any more. He said he was starting his own business–delivering landscape stones. He orders some of his stones through his father’s company so he isn’t in competition to him. He said he bought his own truck, but dump trucks are expensive so he bought a used one and has been fixing it up. It was interesting chatting with Kyle.
Yesterday was a pleasant enough day that I decided to mow the lawn–possibly for the last time this year. It was chilly enough that I started out wearing my jacket, but I quickly warmed up enough that I took it off. It is much more enjoyable mowing the lawn when it’s not sweltering hot. Because we have fenced in most of the back yard for our garden, I have less to mow and I’m able do the whole lawn–the little that we mow–with just one tank of gas.
While I was mowing, I came across Thor’s Hammer lying at the edge of the driveway. It was very heavy, but I was able to pick it up. I believe that means that I have been deemed worthy to wield it. Ok, ok, it actually probably fell from Kyle’s truck rather than Valhalla because it was located near where he had parked. EJ called the company last night to let them know we had found it and they said someone would be out–probably on Saturday–to pick it up. I prefer the imaginative version of the story and I am hoping Thor will stop by to claim it. LOL.
Earlier this week I cut a bunch of herbs and I’ve been dehydrating them in our Magic Mills food dehydrator. I’m trying to get as many herbs cut and dried before I have to cover the plants with straw.
Before the people came to clean out our septic tank earlier in the summer, we had to dig down and uncover the lid to the septic tank. This is the first time we’ve done this since we’ve moved here, and while EJ knew the general area, we weren’t sure exactly where it was located. We dug quite a few holes in searching for it. To prevent digging a bunch of holes in the future, we planted a wooden post where the lid is. Rather than have a random post sticking up out of the ground, we decided to have fun with it. Since the post is on the north side of the house in Northern Michigan, we call it “the North Post.” We would call it “the North pole” but it’s a post, not a pole.
We considered many different ways of creating our North Post. We discovered that a decorative porch post is much, much too expensive for a whimsical project. We can’t paint the post because paint won’t work on a treated post. We decided to hang the sign. I searched for decorative brackets on the Internet, but the cheapest was almost $30 for one that was big enough and I didn’t want to spend that much money. So we are going to make a cross post and hang the sign from that. I’ve been painting a sign that says “North” on it. Wooden letters don’t stand up to our weather, so I ordered a few letters from a company and traced the letters, which I then painted. I also painted a thinner board with numbers to measure the snow. I am going to order an inexpensive thermometer and rain gauge from Amazon and turn our North Post into a weather station. I’ll take photos of the post when we get it set up.
At this time of year, when the weather is getting cooler and the days shorter, the wolf spiders tend to linger on the porch. They scared me, so I scan the porch before I take Hannah outside in the early mornings and evenings. EJ sometimes goes out with us in the evenings. I make him go first so he will be eaten first. Just kidding! He goes first so he can “shoo” away any spiders that might be lurking. He saw me checking the porch the other morning before I took Hannah out and he asked, “Looking for spiders?” I replied, “Of course.” He said, “It’s not spiders you have to watch for. It’s bears. Bears are much more dangerous than spiders.” Thanks a lot, EJ. Well, I haven’t seen any bears lurking on the porch like the spiders do…but I took along a flashlight, just in case I heard a noise. I like to see what’s going to kill me. LOL.
I think it’s funny that whenever I go out into the garden, the chickens follow me around. I’ve read that the chickens consider their human to be the leader of their flock. I thought I’d leave you with this video I took this morning:
I Love To Go A Gardening 
I generally start my posts off talking about the weather as well – my last post I talked about the tornado as it was relatively close to my city – I had just been in the area of the three tornadoes last weekend so it left me reeling a little. That and hearing a tornado would be in Wyandotte and Southgate (right next to me) at 9:10 p,m.
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I thought about you when I heard that there was severe weather down near you. I’m glad you are ok. ❤
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Thanks TJ – I wrote about it in the post because I was genuinely scared as they told what time the tornado would arrive in nearby Southgate and Wyandotte and I don’t have TV and I shut off the computer as it was starting to rumble out there and I shut it down and pulled the plug. The two radio stations (WWJ and WJR) had on sports and a talk show … it was frustrating, but luckily nothing happened, but they had a lot of damage – one picture showed a trampoline in the power lines! https://lindaschaubblog.net/2018/09/26/its-been-a-soggy-and-volatile-september/
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I enjoy storms, but not severe ones that cause tornadoes or damage. You people in southern Michigan sure have been hit with bad weather this year! How far from your walking goal are you? Any chance of you completing it?
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Yes and it is worrisome too – I have my log at my other computer. I use this one in the morning to check in at work and I use it for pictures, scanning mostly because it is missing a few keys. It has been a workhorse and the screen is a little bigger than the one I use all day and in retrospect I should have had the keyboard replaced, but I had a back-up laptop since I work from home and couldn’t be without. I know that as a week ago I still had 250 miles to go and I was going to total it up today since it is month end. I sure hope I can make it, but last year I only set a goal of 755 miles and kept going and going as we had a nice Fall – I may live to regret trying to match it this year!
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That’s amazing, Linda!
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Hi TJ – I just finished today’s post and I did a total since it was month end. So … (drum roll) … I finished off September with 831 miles walked so far this year. I have 220 more miles to make my goal.
Hopefully I make it but we had rain today, but since it was a weekend I could work around it, but I prefer to walk even on the weekend as it messes up my day otherwise. But, since I am trying to get to this goal, I did it. We are having rain again tonight, tomorrow morning and Tuesday morning – being workdays that messes things up unless I go at night – maybe doable, though my boss returns from vacation tomorrow unless he came back tonight. He is in the UP near Munising and he usually stays the four days (Thursday through Sunday) and returns home Monday. Then he’ll land in the office the end of the day.
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Wow! I do hope your weather clears enough so you can get in the final 220 miles, but 831 miles in itself is amazing!
Our forecast calls for rain almost every day this week, but I will believe it when I see it since more often than not this year we have not gotten the predicted rain.
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I hope I do get it done too TJ. Our weather forecast is pretty abysmal for the next week as well. In fact, I said I wasn’t going to complain about the rain anymore after being lucky and having no issues happening with the tornado, but it is disheartening to look ahead and see rain every morning, the usual time I go out to walk. Later in the day doesn’t always work out as I don’t finish at work until 6:00 every evening. Not bad in the Summer, but it is so hot then and now it would be cooler to go at night, but gets dark earlier – it is a Catch-22.
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