Three dead rats (I believe Norway rats) in 24 hours. No broccoli this year. Half or more the cauliflower gone. And possibly 30% of the Brussels sprout plants beyond recovery.
Current music.
Tag Archives: cauliflower
Scram.
Who is eating my cauliflower now?
Is it a lost cause for the others? Should I pull them all now?
Grateful every day and extra today.
We say our “gratefuls” most every day. I’m sure we forget every so often. For months my youngest was always grateful for broccoli and cheese. I can’t really blame him.
For awhile my eldest couldn’t ever say what she was grateful for. She couldn’t choose. Sometimes we’d hold up what we we doing until she agreed to some thing from the day we knew she’d enjoyed. Eventually we just let her skip when she needed to.
For a few years, I posted daily on social media every day in November a few things I was randomly grateful for that day.
I quit social media a few years ago, unless you count this. I started up a new platform early-covid. I quit it in August. And then my mom asks a few days into December if I still do daily gratitudes in November and if I’d do them with her. I’d forgotten all about that aspect of this habit.
Sure, I said. And we didn’t get to every day. It’s been an odd month in our family, let alone “with everything that’s going on.” I do think that’ll be the catch phrase of this year. Is the safe gauge to ask someone how things are going “with everything that’s going on” and let them decide which pieces of that everything they’d like to talk about.
I think she forgot to do today’s and I think I did as well.
As my husband and I are teaching our children that thanksgiving is a day to practice gratitude like we do most every day, but that in our family it is to be particularly aware of and grateful for having enough food to eat and share that we spend time making, sharing, and eating good food.
As we’re waiting another year or two to talk about what other people may be celebrating today, or why there are pilgrim hats on turkeys everywhere, they’ll forget to be grateful for broccoli and cheese (as they are busy being grateful for pumpkin pie and homemade challah and mashed potatoes.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that this year the things that are small are easier to be aware of and grateful for than the past. The slowing down is to thank. The daily life differences between Too Much Corporate and Never Too Much Playtime. The effort and the lack of other efforts.
I’m grateful for the hope I feel when I see the first curls hinting at cabbage heads. Or broccoli bunches. Or cauliflower.
Shifting times.
The obvious, obviously. But also the end of the broccoli, cabbage, and cauli and the start of the beans, squash, and corn.
I hope the Brussels stick around awhile. It’ll depend on the cabbage fly, I imagine.
I forgot when I sowed the potatoes and need to check so I know when to plan their replacements. Anyone remember?
The tunnel behind them is for the melon that still needs to sprout…
I’m not sure why I feel summers here don’t have the varieties winters do. Summers are fine with peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, okra, southern peas, and Malabar spinach. Perhaps it’s the abundance of variety of greens that grow in the winters that feels different.
This mid-season for growing in Central Texas isn’t quite “spring” but will all die off before the dead center of summer. The melons, potatoes, beans, squash, corn, cucumbers, and others will have to run fast to beat the heat and don’t always make it. This is the season I still haven’t learned as intimately as I’d like. The moving target of climate change doesn’t help!
A fly by.
Order-what?
Orderly interspersed with wild, chaos and creation. A balance resulting in my favorite mess.
On the fence.
Another freeze is expected tomorrow night. High 20s. Do I cover the green beans again?
Last time the got some burn. They are flowering now. They’ll likely burn, covered, again. And need a bit of time to try and fruit, again.
I got called a softy, again, today. He wasn’t wrong 😉
So I’ll likely cover them, again. And hope, again, for a long enough stretch of warm sunshine for a green bean bite, or three.
At least until the onions arrive and the brassicae transplants demand more space and the green beans surrender.
Nestled.
The green beans are nestled down. Snug under old linens of love.
The peppers are left to fend for themselves.
The carrots and peas won’t mind a smidge.
The front porch spirits are indoors.
Stay warm this spooky cool night, y’all.
A cool night.
Down to 88° F! I almost need long sleeves. (You think I’m joking…)
I heard on the radio the other day that ~130 days per year here have a heat index over 90° F as the high. Somehow this both surprised me to learn (after 16 years here) as well as soothed me to know. (I did move here for sunshine, after all.)
I ordered a new toy, which I only discovered the name of after 10+ failed attempts at search terms to find it from witnessing one in a video.
And am experimenting… any favored soil blocker receptacles? Or tips for watering them without them crumbling?
Ten cauliflower sowed. Tens more to go.
Lavender lit cauli.
plumdirt 