As you might have noticed, I have not had time to do anything but work and then garden. The weather finally warmed enough to get the planting done… So…
I moved all the indoor plants outside. The weeds are pulled and the grass is reined in. Tomatoes and chiles are outside, still in their flats, hardening off before going into the veg beds. Which latter have been thoroughly overhauled with fresh compost and any seedlings from last year pulled up and binned. Normally, I regard the garlic that escaped harvest and the tomatoes that started themselves as free plants and let them go. This year, I decided to go a bit more authoritarian. No volunteers that I can’t identify. No weeds. I have planted things in organized rows and grids. Everything is labeled. No conflicts of interest like accidentally planting legumes and alliums in the same bed (doesn’t work out because the alliums suppress the microbial partners that help legumes fix nitrogen). It all looks stunningly organized. I suspect that will last about a week…
The jungle clearing is also nearing completion. I have to pay someone to take most of this brush off my land, and there is some small clean-up yet to go. But the jungle has been beaten back to the small east side of the garage, where the foxes live. The groundhog den is now totally exposed. Hopefully, that (and maybe a few judicious applications of cat litter) will make it much less appealing rodent real estate. I think there is one youngster still living in there. I have not seen an adult marmot since the Mama Fox incident. So I hope this potential orphan will decide to go find better digs rather than cope with the hazards of an open hole closely watched by a hungry fox family.
There has been no evidence of rodents or skunks or opossums or raccoons under my porch since I sealed the whole thing with chicken wire, landscape fabric, and about a quarter ton of pea gravel. (After that project, I have become convinced that 20-pound bags of pea gravel weigh more than 20-pound bags of anything else… Also… Have you ever tried to empty a 20-pound bag of pea gravel under a spirea? I have scars now…) I haven’t even seen much damage in the gardens on either side of the road. So one plan worked. At the least, I’m saved the worry of all that varmint digging undermining my porch foundation and ripping apart the lower cedar shakes (shingle siding, for those not from New England). I did buy a few boxes of replacement shakes so I can fix the holes and the rot, but that’s a project for later in the summer. Or whenever I have time… which is not now.
Now, I am barely keeping up and crashing into bed, exhausted, often without eating dinner. (Though I am showering first… because yuck!) I have a good deal more work to do, so expect a paucity of posts for the near future. And anyway, I suspect many of you would rather not be reading online anyway.
However, I do have a few interesting web things to share this week.
First, from Barry’s Economics: Is social media the actual zombie apocalypse? There is data…
Then, Tim Morgan gives an excellent bird’s eye view of historical economics by way of explaining the deepening disaster…
And one of my favorite people, Heather Cox Richardson, reminds us that the sun always rises on a new day of living for each of us. (Until it doesn’t, in which case we probably won’t care…)
Also… have you seen this?… Murder Chicken… I can’t stop laughing!
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 