Journal of a Perennial Optimist (again)

[Yvonne Smith]

The weather warmed back up again, so we were able to work outside in the yard again today. I am moving plants around in the yard to where they have more sunshine. The tomatoes are all growing, and one of the tiny tomato plants already had two ripe tomatoes that we enjoyed picking and eating.
They are the miniature plants that only get about a foot tall and have the cherry tomatoes on them.

I am still picking strawberries every day or two, and also moving some of the smaller plants to the little kiddie-pool garden out in the front yard. We moved another black raspberry out from the back yard to the front, where I am putting them along the front fence, bit by bit. They do fine in shade, and then we will have more of them than just in the small area by the back door eventually.
By 4, I was worn out, came in , showered and took a good long nap and purr therapy from one of the cats.

Bobby is still working on the truck. He thinks he might have it working again, finally. He has driving it around the black a few times and it is not overheating, but we have not tried going any further than that yet.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

The weather has warmed up finally again, and I have been spending more time outside, working in the yard and garden areas and some time just in the ZG recliner and soaking up sunshine.
My plants arrived and I have the new raspberries planted in pots to recover from their almost 10 day trip across the country. I need to rototill the area where I want to plant the raspberries, and then when the order from Starks arrives, I can plant all of them. I intend to plant some squash in between which will grow fast and shade the roots of the growing raspberries, and there is plenty of room there for the squash to grow and sprawl out.

My doctor said we would do labs in another 3 months, to see how everything is doing, and she was pleased that the last labs turned out better than the first ones were.
Next week is Bobby’s echo and cardiologist visit, and in June, it is my annual visit. I have had the pacemaker over Six year now, so I want to ask my doctor about when they put in one with a new battery. It is supposed to last for 10 years, but I think that they re-do it sooner than that, just to be safe. Since i am pretty healthy now, I would like to have it done sooner, becasue one never knows about their health at a later date.

Bobby is still just driving the GMC around the block and we are not taking it anywhere else, and not going anywhere we do not have to go, because the old Ford has well over 250,000 miles on it and is feeling its age.

 

[Mary Stetler]

The weather has warmed up finally again, and I have been spending more time outside, working in the yard and garden areas and some time just in the ZG recliner and soaking up sunshine.
My plants arrived and I have the new raspberries planted in pots to recover from their almost 10 day trip across the country. I need to rototill the area where I want to plant the raspberries, and then when the order from Starks arrives, I can plant all of them. I intend to plant some squash in between which will grow fast and shade the roots of the growing raspberries, and there is plenty of room there for the squash to grow and sprawl out.

My doctor said we would do labs in another 3 months, to see how everything is doing, and she was pleased that the last labs turned out better than the first ones were.
Next week is Bobby’s echo and cardiologist visit, and in June, it is my annual visit. I have had the pacemaker over Six year now, so I want to ask my doctor about when they put in one with a new battery. It is supposed to last for 10 years, but I think that they re-do it sooner than that, just to be safe. Since i am pretty healthy now, I would like to have it done sooner, becasue one never knows about their health at a later date.

Bobby is still just driving the GMC around the block and we are not taking it anywhere else, and not going anywhere we do not have to go, because the old Ford has well over 250,000 miles on it and is feeling its age.

I may have waited too long to start planting. Afternoon temps will be in the eighties. The plants may like it but I won't. Last years hazelnut from Starks did well (unil the rabbits found it and we fenced it in.) so I got another and it has arrived. We have a lot of black walnut trees on the farm. But I wanted my own hazelnuts. They grow wild in Wisconsin but I didn't have any. The new one can cross pollinate the one from last year when they get going. Problem is there are no pollinators this year. I have ONE bumble bee slowly moving through my HUGE Wolf River apple tree just now. It is so sad. Fruit futures are not looking good. It was too cold and too windy for them while blooming happened. Even my bees are not up yet, if they are still alive.
Fortunately beans pollinate with wind and other veggies can be hand pollinated.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

We are still living in an Alabama Rainforest ! It is good that I planted those raspberries right after they arrived, because the rains arrived soon after that and haven’t stopped since. The air has been almost too thick and damp to breathe.

I would never have been able to use the little cultivator if I had not done it before all the rain.
My new Mini-Mower arrived, but has been sitting in Bobby’s shop because it has been raining every single day. The pool filled up and has been overflowing.
Bobby went out today and drained some of the excess water out of the pool.

I am sure that the weather will suddenly decide that it is summer, stop raining and shoot the temperature up to 90+, and then we will not have any more rain for 2 months, but we have not gotten to that point as of yet.
But, all of the plants are growing great, with the mixture of rain and sunshine that we have been having, although the rains arriving has knocked the flowers off of the roses, lilies, and Rose of Sharon, so we are not enjoying the blooms as much as if we had less rain.

My little Cheropugy bush cherry that didn’t revive this spring has decided to come back to life !
The eBay seller sent me a replacement, but he sent it to the wrong person, and it ended up in north Idaho, and I had her order of figs instead. So we each shipped the orders on , and the new bush cherry has been doing fine and growing, in spite of almost two weeks spent in a box traveling around the country.

Since the first plant still looked alive, but just did not come out of winter dormancy, I didn’t want to throw it out, and I planted it into a planter instead to see if it would actually do anything.
Now, almost into June, it has teen-tiny green buds starting out !
I have no idea why it didn’t grow like the other bush cherry did, but it looks like it is going to do so now. Once it seems to be doing good, I will find another place to plant it where it can grow naturally again.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

It looks like we have sunshine until this weekend, and the weather is nice but not too hot, so I want to get as much done in the yard as possible before the rain hits again on Sunday. Everything (especially the weeds ?) has grown like crazy all over, where I had things fairly clear before, so it is going to be more weedeating, and then just sitting in my gardening chair and weeding where I cant use the weedeater or the Mini-Mower.

Bobby wants to make a little pond with a waterfall out in the back yard by the swimming pool eventually this summer, and we talked about adding a small weeping willow behind the pond, since we both love them.
Regular weeping willows get huge, but I found a corkscrew weeping willow that is much smaller, and we can keep it trimmed back so it does not get too tall.

I ordered some cuttings and have them in water in the kitchen window and they have already started rooting. They should be ready to pot up in a few weeks and plant by this fall once Bobby is done with the pond.
We would like a few goldfish, so if the pond idea works okay, maybe next spring we will put in a few of the goldfish, or even a betta.

My body really lets me know when I have been out working in the garden ! It took me a while to unstiffen this morning, but I am doing much better now. The cardiologist visit went well, my ejection fraction was between 45-50%, so th heart failure is just a little worse than last year, but not that much. A year ago, it was between 50-55%.

I am hoping that the whole food plant based eating plan will help bring everything back up, since it is basically the same as the “heart healthy diet” that they give me each time I am at the Heart Center to see my doctor there.
The pacemaker was checked, and it is doing fine, has about 3 years left on the battery.