Well Tuesday was a total work day for me as I put plan B into action for the removal of those 4 oak tree stumps that I worked on a couple weeks ago. The blasting attempt by my mountain buddy Caleb was a failure as far as seeing them removed but it was a success if you like to hear and watch things go Bang; and did he ever put on a show. That was definitely one of the more exciting things we have done this summer, but to no avail in helping to remove the stumps.
I started the day much the usual except for a sleep in until nearly 7:30. We both have some difficulty in getting a good night's sleep on the road especially in the hotel Nancy's calls the "hotel from hell" in Lancaster, Pa. Oh well I have slept in some rough places especially in the Philippines, Wake Island, Thailand and Japan when flying with the USAF during the Vietnam Era. She never would have made it in the service especially overseas.
After a few quiet moments and the posting of this ramble I fried a couple cackleberries and sliced up a large home grown tomato, neighbor Gerald brought to us from Raleigh and toasted some sourdough bread for breakfast, wow there is something about the combination of eggs and tomato's that fancy my taste buds. I checked the gardens for deer damage and it seems they made another foray last night once again into my beets pulling them up and leaving them to dry out on the ground. I replanted them in hope's they aren't too far gone. Time will tell as we are crazy about beet greens, luckily I planted another row in the upper garden and they are about ready to harvest for salads.
I decided to put plan B into action so I gathered up the ax and the golf cart and headed up into the back woods for dried out brush, limbs, sticks, pine cones anything that will burn that is rotted and dried out. I gathered several loads and deposited them by the stumps. I actually hope to "kill two birds with one stone" by not only burning the stumps where they are and also clean out lots of debris in the back woods. I have 4 huge piles of material and now I'm was waiting for a somewhat cloudy day to do the burning. We had a lite shower last night which helped with adding some moisture to the surrounding woods and reduce the chance for sparks on setting the woods on fire. I have the dirt removed from around the stumps so the fire will be down into the ground and I will drag a garden hose out to the area as well. I'm ready to burn.
After the brush gathering job was complete I headed down to the lower garden to hoe around some plants that survived the deer foray and then I decided to transplant fourteen hills of sweet corn that sprouted in my 9 packs as well as sow another couple rows of corn. I'm not having great success with corn this year despite purchasing new seed. One in about four sprouted and survived to about 3-4 inches in height. I have lots of small teardrop tomato's set on the plants in the upper garden and what lettuce the deer left alone looks as if I may get a salad or two.
We had 1/2 runner beans with fresh corn off the cob for supper, yeow I could eat these two veggies just about everyday of the week. They were delicious to say the least and we have two ears for tonight's menu. After supper we vegetated as it was raining lightly. We missed our hike for the day as we were planning on a late evening hike, LATER
