Well Monday started out with my usual 6 ish rollout to my routines that start with some quiet times after posting this ramble to honor my LORD, give thanks for another day and to lift up several by name for comfort and healing, all seem to be holding as of now. It was quiet around the cabin after having family and friends here for most of the month. I headed out to check on the gardens after my morning posts and checking social media updates and the news and saw where a large buck had walked right through the backwoods garden over night. But I'm thrilled he found nothing to munch on, as just his tracks made it clear of his presence. I did have an over night visitor to the compost pile where it dug around looking for something to eat.
The gardens are looking good after the 1/2 inch of rain on Sunday as so is the grasses. I did spread lime on the backwoods yards as moss is making a come back in the upper areas. Not nearly as bad as years past when that yard was mainly nothing but moss. It has come a long way with showing green grass over the past couple of years. The grass was heavy with dew along with the wetness from the rain the day before so just maybe the pelletized lime with make a difference in those areas. I took out the now matured leaf lettuces and composed them as it did so well this year as we ate and gave so much away. I sowed radish seeds in its place and then sowed some Igloo lettuces seeds in hopes it will germinate and we have to accompany the black seeded Simpson lettuce already getting close to be big enough to harvest for our salad bowl. I did harvest beet greens, kale and a couple collard leaves to add the bowl as well.
The Japanese beetles are a pain this year especially on the bean plants and some flowers like the dahlias. I continue to harvest them in a bucket of water where they cling into a ball and then I dispatch them with my foot as well as spraying some with an insecticide. Grass and weeds grow where I don't want them and they are in every bed so that keeps me busy constantly pulling them up. This year the clover is evident to most all areas of the yards with their little white blooms which I like except in the garden and flower beds as it holds the soil and hopefully helps get rid of the moss.
Well Nancy was busy washing sheets and changing bed linins for the next batch of friends who come in September. I think we are free through the month of August except for locals for dinners. We did have our Orkin bug man come by to check out the cabin where Amy and Nancy found one bat tick in the upstairs bathroom which is where we heard the bats in the walls. It seems they are like bed bugs and hard to get rid of, but he said he had to have an expert to come and survey the cabin to determine if we have any in the walls. I doubt that we do because the single tick came in around the screen and the only time we had the upstairs bathroom window open since the bats have been removed. Nancy is in a tizzy over this one tick we saw a week or so ago and I'm sure the bats were only in the cabin roof a couple days since we had all the rain for nearly a week. Thankfully after getting the bats removed we haven't seen or hear any in the cabin roof and walls. Her friends at church have sent her into hysterical mode with war stories of past infestations of bat ticks, oh well, LATER
