Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Water water everywhere

Sometimes, I wish we had a really big problem to fix, instead of all these little ones. I know it wasn't fun for Shannon and Ian when their pipes were broken, but at least it was a specific problem with a specific solution, and it was readily identifiable what both of those were. Our water heater has taken up the fight now. It's leaking. From nowhere. At least no where we can see. And it is only 5 years old. Is that old for a water heater? I have no idea. I wouldn't be surprised if it rusted out, considering the state of most of our other pipes. At least the home warranty will cover this. So even if it is totally broken, at least it will only cost $55 to replace it. We extended the home warranty because of the 20+ year furnace, but if we get a new water heater out of it, that's ok too.
In other news, I harvested all the rest of the broccoli and the swiss chard. Alann didn't bag the chard, so it is wilty. I guess if I just blanch it and freeze it, it won't matter if it is wilty. I'm still a little bugged though. I know I know, I should have just done it myself, but he knows the reason I didn't. I harvested some of the peas. They are some fatty peas. I am way excited for the rest of them to be done so I can make some fresh peas for dinner. And the sugar snaps are doing good. A lot of them are ready too. We are having stir fry one of these nights, and I am going to harvest the sugars for those. I dont really remember if I planted snow peas or sugar snaps.....crap. I better check the packages. That makes a big difference in harvesting.
The beans are a little leggy. They honestly don't look any different then they did last year, and last year I got like 5 green beans off of them. Since I pulled the chard and broccoli though, they should get more sun, which will help. (I learned shortly after I removed the chard that I could have just harvested the big leaves and left the stubs and roots and they would have grown new leaves. Oh well. The chard was an impulse buy anyway.) Now I don't know what to plant behind the beans where the broccoli was. Maybe carrots. But my carrots don't grow. Maybe I'll just wait a month or so and plant more beets. We have yet to harvest a good size beet. (In a book about root cellaring that I got, there is a picture of a guy holding a basket of beets, and each beet is the size of his head!) The beets we get are usually about the size of a golf ball. Maybe I am impatient (likely). I have a hard time thinning out the beets to the proper spacing too. I worry that I will thin the one that would have grown better. I'm getting over it. Slowly.
The tomatoes have taken off. The cherry, which was never frozen as much as the romas, already has little green tomatoes on it. I really really hope the romas come through for me. I could use some salsa. MMM, salsa. Still warm from the sun salsa- even better. I built a little trellis for the tomatoes this year. The stakes worked ok last year, but some of them broke and the tomatoes outgrew the stakes, so I ended up tying the tomatoes to the frame for the plastic when it is cold. This year we try the trellis. It was a relatively cheap investment, so if it doesnt work out, I wont be too bummed. I guess if it doesnt work, next year we will try the metal tomato cages. I don't like them though. Maybe we could get some of the metal fencing that we used to make the garden, and we could use that to make little cages. Maybe I just need to find a new place for the tomatoes. I don't know where else they could go though. Of course we might not have time for or want to do a garden next year anyway. I assume we will, but if we might move, then we will have to do only quick growing stuff- no drawn out harvests like corn and tomatoes and peppers.
Otherwise, things are good. Nothing much else to report...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

maybe next time she wont leave the char in the sink for 2 days.