Two rows of beets with more than half of them, with what looked like wilted leaves, lying on the ground! Upon closer inspection, the varmints had run a tunnel under each row. Two mini ditches running under two rows beet greens!! By the looks of the leaves I’d say that the damage had only been done in the past 48 hours. So the job of processing beets turned into a much smaller task than expected.
I showed it to Hubby and he set vole bat traps. These have worked well for us in the past but I guess we were not diligent to keep up the vigil of keeping them filled with poison.
For lunch we had fried turnips. Well they weren’t really fried but sautéed until browned with salt, paprika and garlic powder. This seems to be our favorite way to eat them this year. The mice like turnips too but not nearly as well as they do beets so no threat of them wiping out the turnip row for now.
I piddled around all afternoon outside. I cleaned an area where a lot of planted pots had sat most of the summer. A few things such as the lavender and my fern I put in the A-frame greenhouse. Other pots with dead plants I dumped the soil together into a couple of buckets and stored the pots in the barn. The ones with living plants I sat up against the house for the winter.
Then I went to dig my carrots. The ones I planted in the spring….the ones that sat in the mud for weeks on end and then when the ground dried out it turned to something akin to a brick. I had dug a few carrots earlier in the fall so there wasn’t a lot left. I was pleased with what I found. Few had been eaten by the voles, and not many had carrot worm damage.
After digging that short row, I decided to dig the Calla Lilies. I rarely waste time on flowers bulbs that require digging and replanting but someone gave me these bulbs in the spring and I had so much fun watching them grow. They were beautiful up against the front side of the barn. I plan to expand them all the way across next year! I also had a few right outside the kitchen window. The Hummingbirds like them. Anything the Hummer’s like we try to keep around for them. We love our Hummers. They have come and gone for the year but we look forward to seeing them again next year.
Over all, I was pleased with the day. I felt horrible on Sunday, as if I didn’t have the strength to get out of the chair. While I did not work very hard today, I did get some much needed work done and it felt good to accomplish things. Hubby had a bad day and I advised him to rest for most of it.
Yesterday, Hubby finished up the small storage room I started to clean in the basement last week. I am almost certain that mold bothers me and I got into too much of it on Sat which would explain why I felt so bad on Sunday. We decided to do away with the old concrete blocks and wooden boards that for years have served as shelves in this room. We invested in some fairly inexpensive plastic shelving. I hope to get that room put back together soon. (Our kitchen is full of jars of chicken and applesauce.)
I look forward to the rest of this summer-like week and hopefully getting more needed work done….