Yesterday I was out enjoying the garden. It was a beautiful, sunny, Goldilocks kind of day and I was in and out hanging wet laundry on the line and bringing in the dry clothes. I love drying clothes and sheets and towels outdoors during the summer. My next door neighbor likes it too. He tells me he always knows that Saturday is going to be a nice day because I’m hanging laundry out. As someone who suffers from seasonal allergies, all the experts tell me never hang laundry outside to
dry. Supposedly it catches pollen which you then rub your face on with your towels and sleep in with your sheets, and wear on your back with your clothes. But really, in all the years I have been hanging out my laundry, I can’t say I have noticed that it makes me feel worse. I’m already taking allergy medication that works really well to keep the symptoms at bay except on the highest pollen count days so perhaps that is why I don’t notice a problem? Maybe if I didn’t take medicine from thaw to frost I would notice my laundry causing me trouble? Can’t say. Until I notice my sun-dried laundry making me feel worse, I will continue to hang it outside. And even if the day comes where I start to notice it troubles me I might just ignore it because I really like saving money on my utility bills!Today Bookman and I would have normally been out in the garden enjoying the cool, early morning, but we were busy biking in the St. Paul Bicycle Classic. Thirty miles of bike riding fun through the closed streets of St Paul. All my hard bike workouts have been paying off as I passed quite a few people going up hill who were wearing fancy racing jerseys and riding nice road bikes while I’m riding a commuter bike with a rack and basket on the back end. These rides are dangerous though because I start to think how much faster I could be if I had one of those nice road bikes. One of the pleasures of biking though, even while huffing and puffing up a hill, is being slow enough to see the front yard gardens of other people around town. There were some really nice ones too. One shade garden was especially lovely and looked so serene it made me want to stop and rest in it.
Back in my garden it feels like things are starting to wind down even though I am a month away from the average first frost date (October 7). The heirloom garlic I ordered in July arrived a few days ago. I got a pound of Moroccan Creole. It is supposed to be a little warm. I am not someone who likes really hot and spicy foods, a medium curry is my limit and hot peppers, forget it. But I like hot garlic. This won’t be hot, but warm is good. I have to keep it cool and dry until I can plant it, after first frost when there will still be some nice days for the cloves to grow some roots but hopefully not nice enough for them to start sprouting.
A couple weeks ago I planted some radishes and turnips to have as end of season things that don’t mind cooler weather. I have never done this before and it is clear I have some things to learn. Everything began sprouting beautifully but the radish sprouts have been decimated and the turnips are quickly disappearing too. In spring I don’t have to contend with slugs and grasshoppers but at the end of the season they are everywhere. I must figure out a way to deal with them so next year my late season sprouts don’t get eaten. I still might get lucky and get a few turnips but the radishes, there was only one sprout left yesterday and I expect it will no longer be there when next I check. Sigh.Friday morning while waiting for the bus in the cool dawn I discovered the likely visitors to Amy Pond I had all summer. I looked down the street and not three car lengths away were four raccoons casually ambling across the road. It was a mother, fairly large around 30 pounds (13.6 kg) I’d say, and three adolescents following behind her. One of them looked up at me, waved, and said, “thanks for all the sushi!” I was not amused. We never were able to get the solar pump working again after their visit so we never got our TARDIS “fountain” going. I think there is still one fish left in the pond but the floating plants that did survive the visits have multiplied so much that they cover the surface so I can’t look in to see if there is a fish. I haven’t seen any mosquito larva so I am assuming there is at least one fish taking care of them. I won’t know for sure until we are ready to drain the pond for the winter.
We’ve still got corn in the garden. We had our first ears last weekend. We bought an heirloom variety, the name of which I don’t remember and I am too lazy to go and look it up at the moment. It is sweet corn but it is not the juicy high water content, sugary sweet stuff you get at the grocery store that doesn’t taste like much but sugar. No, this corn is a bit chewy, not especially juicy, mildly sweet and actually tastes like corn. Bookman isn’t thrilled with it but I like it quite a bit. Sure it could be juicier, but I like the flavor. Bookman is advocating for a different variety next year. I definitely want to stick with an heirloom so we’ll see what our choices end up being. In the mean time, we’ll be enjoying corn on the cob and black bean veggie burgers for dinner tonight.
Yay! You were biking!! 30 miles is a lot. Way to go!!!
Sorry to hear about your raccoon problem. We used to have a blue heron visit our pond (which we did not mind bc we had lots of fish) but he hasn’t visited in forever!
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Helen, it was lots of fun. I need to figure out if I can move the handle bars on my bike forward a bit because the bike doesn’t quite fit right for longer distances and up hills. If I can’t make the right adjustments then I have a good excuse for a road bike 🙂 Your heron probably found even better fishing grounds. My raccoon family is a challenge but they keep things interesting!
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Take your bike to a bike shop – they’re experts, they can help youi!
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That’s the plan! We have an awesome shop nearby and we are hoping they will also be able to help with some MS-related adjustments Bookman needs to help make riding easier for him.
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Enjoy your dinner – sounds yum! And, way to go on all that bike riding! I pretty much hit my limit after about 12 miles. Ha. For now I’m waiting for our temperatures to drop some so I can go bike riding again. It’s just way too hot here still.
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Iliana, it was delicious, thanks! Biking is the one exercise I really enjoy, especially when I get to zoom down hills!
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30 miles! Good for you Stefanie. I’m sorry to hear you are winding down in your garden but, woo hoo, that means we are winding up (in the sense that our summer season is coming).
I’m with you on hanging clothes outside. I love the smell of sun-dried clothes. In winter we do get clear sunny days but the sun doesn’t last long enough in the day to dry things. So, I use a clothes horse and put that out on our north facing (the equivalent of your south facing) verandah to catch as much sun as I can, and then bring it inside the warm house to finish off the drying. I don’t have a dryer. We had one, moved to this house with it in 1997, and put it in the garage. Having never used it after moving here, we eventually turfed it out. Of course, if I lived in a place with snow and ice I’d probably need to rethink my practice.
We were horrified when we lived in SoCal to be not allowed outside clothes lines. It wasn’t a gated community but it was managed by some sort of Residents Association. (As renters we weren’t fully across the structure). In SoCal? With all that sun? Madness. I used a clothes horse there too. Of course, you did have to shake off the pollution grit before you brought the clothes in at certain times of the year!
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whisperinggums, Thanks! It’s been a pretty good gardening season and soon I will get to rest just like the garden. I hope your coming summer ends up being a good one. I would love to get along without a dryer but winter keeps me from being able to do it, everything would freeze before it had a chance to dry. I’ve thought about stringing a line in the basement but things would just take too long to dry because there isn’t much light down there. It’s crazy in SoCal isn’t it? Not only that some areas have rules against hanging clothes out to dry but that even in places that don’t hardly anyone takes advantage of the weather. Such a shame.
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It’s unbelievable really. I love travelling around countries where people take great pains to hang clothes outside (or inside if necessary) – in Japan, Singapore, you see all sorts of contraptions on balconies of multi story apartment buildings for drying clothes. In Japan they have huge pegs for attaching donnas/duvets to balcony railings for drying. It makes me cranky to see appearance being given a higher value than practicality/economy/sustainability values. But, I know I’m preaching to the converted here to I’ll be quiet now!
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I admit I felt kind of weird when I began hanging out my laundry years ago. We don’t have a tall fence so the backyard is pretty much viewable from the street and from most of my neighbor’s yards. But I took courage from my convictions and photos I’ve seen of European cities with laundry hanging on their balconies and no one has ever complained. I think in terms of appearance, our ideas of what is proper and attractive needs to change. I don;t hang out my underwear for all to see, I dry that on a rack indoors, but there is something really lovely about sheets fluttering in the breeze.
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Ah underwear … We Aussies always have in the past and no one thought any of it. Our line is pretty private … One neighbour could inspect it if they went down to the back corner of their yard. But, I mostly hang undies on my horse though not always.
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Way to go on the bike ride Stefanie and Bookman! That must have been fun to bike the streets of St. Paul and observe gardens and yards while simultaneously getting exercise. How do you feel today Stefanie?
Thanks for the monarch pictures! I always enjoy seeing butterflies in person and in pictures.
Sorry about the raccoon sighting. They can’t have been helpful to your Amy pond and the inhabitants therein. My mother had a raccoon one year dig up her potted petunias. What a mess. Thus far, we’ve not spotted a raccoon around our yard but we do have a resident skunk. He or she has helped us by revealing a huge ground wasp nest in the ground of one of our flower beds. The skunk was digging there around 3AM Thursday morning and left out a cry and some spray outside our bedroom window. I wonder if the wasps he or she was after were stinging the poor creature?
Enjoy your corn crop. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of eating heirloom corn.
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Vanessa, thanks! It was lots of fun. Feeling fine today, ready for another ride. Though Bookman says his backside is a bit sore 🙂
Glad you enjoyed the monarch pictures! They are such pretty butterflies. I wish I could have gotten a photo of the big yellow swallowtail that visited a number of times in mid-summer but it never waited around long enough for me to get the camera. Next year. As for the raccoons, I know they are around, I just rarely see them given the hours they keep. I’ve not seen a skunk around, I think I’d rather have raccoons. It was nice of your skunk to dig up the wasp nest for you, though I can’t imagine it smelled very good after it sprayed. Hopefully the scent didn’t hang around very long!
This is the first time I’ve had heirloom corn and I am really pleased with it. I’m sure we will eventually be able to find a variety both Bookman and I will like.
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I love the smell of clothes dried on the line. I miss that. Sheets hung in the sun stay white. I miss that, too.
We agree about corn. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth and I definitely don’t want my corn to taste like candy corn. Silver Queen is my favorite white and Butter and Sugar my favorite bi-color. Both are old varieties, but I’m not sure they’d be considered heirloom.
Your raccoons are like the groundhogs we had in Marshfield. We loved watching them, especially the babies popping in and out of the chicken wire around the garden and racing up and down the rows like aisles in a grocery store. We even taught our Irish Wolfhound not to bother them. The last thing I wanted was a present of a dead or, worse, half dead animal! I have a photo of two of them lolling on our Adirondack chairs! Eventually, we had to string a single electric wire around the garden so we could have some of our produce.
Now, in Philly, no sun dried laundry, no groundhogs, no homegrown vegetables. Sigh!
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Joan, yes, they do smell to good don’t they? And there tends to be not many wrinkles either which means I don;t have to feel guilty about not ironing! I will have to check and see if Silver Queen or Butter and Sugar are heirloom varieties and if they are I’ll be sure to give them a try! Groundhogs and raccoons are both cute especially the young ones. The baby groundhogs you had sound like they were lots of fun to watch. But yeah, not fun when they start eating all your produce!
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Laundry smells completely different when dried outside unless of course ones neighbour decides to have a BBQ close to the place where you hang overturning. Onion smells ing sheets are not to my taste
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BookerTalk, don’t they though? Thankfully my line is the middle of the garden and my neighbor’s grill is by his back door which is not far from my bedroom window so while my laundry never smells like barbeque by bedroom sometimes does.
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Sounds like a ymmy dinner–do you make your own veggie burgers? And are you willing to share the recipe if so? We are going to have the same forecast this week as you though no worries of any frost for us quite yet. I think all the neighborhood animals know where to get a free meal–so nice of you to do all that work for them! 🙂 But I know it is as much the process and enjoyment of doing as the eating, but I still hope you are getting lots of goodies to eat, too! What happened to the sunflower seeds?
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Danielle, oh it was delicious! We do make our own veggie burgers and I will get Bookman to write down his recipe for me and send it to you. I imagine if more of my neighbors had veggie gardens the critters would not all visit my yard. I should start encouraging all of them to start a garden! The bag on the sunflower is working marvelously. No one has stolen the flower head. It is still in the garden finishing up its seed growing process.
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