Yesterday was one of those days when I had an agenda laid out, the list of things that I thought I was going to get done.
For example, I was going to work on the rock edging for the new garden bed, and I was going to water my infant winter garden. And of course there was the ever present laundry to get done. I thought I would spread some mulch around the day lilies and in the shade garden behind the house.
So, I got the laundry done, and hung out. Since I was in the area, I headed out to the vegetable garden, where I did indeed water the little spinaches and lettuces that are destined to live under the cold frames and give their lives so we can have salad all winter. While I was out there, I checked on the chard patch.
Last week I found it inundated with little tiny caterpillars that were almost translucent. None of them were more than half an inch long, but there were so many of them and they were so voracious they had turned the leaves into lace. That was another time when my agenda went into the figurative trash. I spent a pleasant hour taking all the lacy leaves off the plants and hunting down and squashing all the little caterpillars that were inhabiting the stems.
The chard is recovering quite nicely. There are lots of little leaves sprouting, and I found a few worms to squish, but not many. I moved on to the kale patch, where I spent some time killing the harlequin beetles that have survived the many forays I have made in the battle against them. There really aren’t that many of them, but I don’t like to let the adults get big enough to lay eggs, because then you just have to start all over again. I wish I knew what ate them. They are so brightly colored I suspect they don’t taste good. I did surprise a little grey jumping spider who was hunting them, though. So they do have predators.
Then I headed off towards the mulch pile, thinking that I was going to get a load of the ground up elm from the ice storm and finish covering the cardboard that is killing the weeds and grass where my new flower bed is going. I had to walk past my hardy fig bush though, and of course I paid it a visit. That was when my plans for the day took a sudden turn in a quite fresh direction.
There were lots of figs ripe. The crop is finally starting to come in. The fig has been teasing me with 2 or 3 ripe fruit every day or so for the last three weeks. Suddenly, there were several ripe figs on every branch. So, I picked them. Then I went in the house and made fig preserves.
This morning I got them packed and processed. I imagine that there will be more figs coming along right soon, as long as we don’t have a frost. Then I can make more preserves. But the soft fig just doesn’t keep very well. So I had to amend the agenda for the day and get them preserved while they were still worth preserving.
Mmmm. Very good. Life is just full of little surprises, some good, some bad. This was a good one.
Now I’m off to the library to see if I can find a book on planning a shrubbery/stroll garden. We finally have a suitable “floor plan” for the one we are planning. Now all we need to do is find lots and lots of money with which to purchase the plants.
