Saltwater shipment today

I had a store credit to my favorite online saltwater fish supplier and i wanted to use it before winter begins, cause then its too cold to  ship anything.  My tank keeps me entertained during the winter when i can't garden, so i wanted to get that loose end tied up.
I'm getting algae growth that is encroaching and choking out some corals, so i  need an urchin. Tuxedo urchins are a great all-purpose algae eating helper. They will eat all types of algae that i have ever had in my tanks. Their only drawback is that they are little round bulldozers, so i had to tack as much as  i could down with epoxy putty. If i don't, the critter will either knock a coral or frag down behind something where i can't see or enjoy it and it might get shaded out and die. Or else the urchin will pick it up and parade around the tank 'wearing' it, usually this ends the same way, the coral or frag dies because it gets improper lighting.
Anyway my shipment is coming by FedEx, and should be here soon. Its about 9:30am here. I'm getting a small order, just the urchin, 3 peppermint shrimp and one scarlet/skunk cleaner shrimp.

Box arrived at 10:00am
Peppermint shrimp:

 (above)
Scarlet or Skunk cleaner shrimp.  These are the type of shrimp that fish will line up for like patients at a Dr.'s office waiting for a checkup.
 (below)
Tuxedo urchin:

All being drip-acclimated,  takes 2 hours at least so there is no shock to their systems due to differences in water chemistry:

 

Everything looks good so far.

Teething and boring weather

The youngest is teething. Four are coming in at once.  She already had two, soon the grand total will be 6. Its pretty rough on her...and me.  But infant tylenol and oragel will help.

poor critter.

The weather, frankly,  has been lame.   Its making me lame, and i am tired of gray skies.  It was chilly  yesterday and i'm seriously expecting a long, snowy and cold winter.  We did get a bit of snow, mixed wet with rain late last night, but nothing that stuck.


The winter rye that hubby sowed in the yard has not sprouted, i think its too cold even for that.
I neatened up the string around the JA plot, cause thats about the only thing i can do.

Here it is in all its anticlimactic glory:

looking West

&

looking East:

 

I have been looking up info on what to do about the apple trees, pruning suggestions and the like.  I haven't come to a decision on if i will try it at this time of year or not.  I did learn something new though. If you prune apple trees too heavily in the spring it can make them flower early and that can be bad if you get another frost.  So i think spring is out.  I do have to find out if it is wise to remove all the beginning apples next spring so the trees can concentrate on strengthening roots and trunk.  i noticed the trunk on the bigger tree is actually narrower toward the ground than it is about 4 feet up. It just does not look right.
They had been planted in a bad spot that may have been good at one time until the trees behind the yard that belong to the other neighbors grew too high and shaded them out. (Box Elders, rant to follow)

This is the bigger apple tree. It has a "knee"...  we had to prop it up with a portion of tree trunk we cut to move the neighbors fence OFF our yard.  I used the cotton strap the hospital sent me home with after my car accident that left me with a fairly messed-up leg. The belt was so hubby could wrap it around me to pick me up if i fell over.  Luckily it never had to be used! Now it has a great purpose!

Then, the littler one.  They look like they have not had enough light for a number of years,  i can only guess that the big one must be 6 years old at least, the little one at least 3. But with inadequate sunlight, they could be much older.

 

 The big one is very fruitful, but after doing a bit of research, i found out what is bugging the fruit. Apple Maggot is one thing i positively ID'd.

It has a LOT of shape issues. The only reason it is still standing is because it was hooked over the pickets of the fence the neighbors put up. That fence was placed about 3 feet into what is now our yard.  The trees are now about 5 feet away from the fence as it is properly placed about 4 inches inside our property line.

Now, for the Box Elder rant.  They are part of the reason why it took so much of the summer to get work done around the new yard.  They were everywhere, fallen over, broken, growing up through what used to be the basement of the burned-down house.  At best,hey are basically overgrown weeds. 

They are prolific, fast growing, weak, spindly, ugly looking things. The female trees attract tons of Box Elder Bugs, which are mainly annoying but they freak out my hubby who insisted that they were ticks when we first moved in.  The trees also drop their leaves slowly all summer and make a huge number of seeds that are similar to maple helicopters.  These leaves and seeds make a mess on any paved areas, stick to windshields, get into car vents and roof gutters, coat the lawn and the seeds start sprouting in flower beds and veggie gardens and of course attract the bugs which drink the sap from the seed pods.

The trees grow at least a foot in all directions each spring,  they sucker and water sprout all over if you lop off branches. The trees are so useless, you can't even use them to burn as firewood since they gum up the chimney and can create conditions that can cause chimney fires. They are also very brittle and can come down on houses and buildings, they crack under snow and ice and end up hollow or half deadwood. Very dangerous trees!

There is one on the other side of our house that belong to the neighbors that i will call "the nice ones" .  This tree is the only issue we have with them.  The tree leaned over our roof on the shady side of the house and it rubbed our ridge, dropped leaves on the roof and basically took a few years off the life of our shingles. We offered to have the tree cut down entirely (we are lucky enough to know a professional tree-chopper-downer so the cost would be minimal) and i even suggested that i'd replace it with something ornamental for them, but for some reason the Mrs is attached to the tree.
The best we could do was convince them to a friendly agreement that we would have the big branch that was dangling over our roof (and causing the trunk to list to our side) removed as well as the branches that were shading out  what little yard we have on that side of the house.  At least now the tree does not look as though it will come through my living room if we get an ice storm or a hurricane.  That's a relief!
This is what is left after we removed the parts that were causing damage and after the neighbor hubby did some trimming of his own:

As gorgeous as this tree is now, i still think they should have taken me up on that ornamental offer.  LOL

At least today is sunny, according to the weather forecasters we should be having "seasonable" weather for the next week or so. This means not so many threats of snow and temps more around the 50-60 degree mark-  this is great, maybe the ground will warm up just enough for things to move a bit before the snow really falls.

No snow yet!

Thank goodness.

It was way too early to be expecting snow. and i had too much to do this morning.  Had to register the truck and run a few errands. Our town hall does not take debit cards for some brainless reason, so i had to get the amount, then go to the bank, get cash and then go back to the town hall and pay. I know i have checks left somewhere, this is why i still keep them,  but do you think i could find them when they are needed? Nooooo! Haha.

So that is another good reason that i am happy that there was no snow.  Rain is no treat either seeing as we have had way more than our share this summer.  I can't help but wonder if that is going to translate into extra snow this winter!

I'm all but snacking on Tylenol today, the digger i took yesterday gets to take the blame.  Usually the pain is bearable on a good day if i don't have things lined up to do.  But today stuff couldn't wait any longer and if i got it over and done with i could sit back the rest of the day and not let it get to me.

I had some perishable stuff to mail out today and that sort of thing just makes me nervous. Like i think i'm going to forget to mail it, or i'm going to put it in the box and something will happen and it will sit on the table for a week, or i expect that something else will come up and all the money in my account will be needed and i won't have enough money to mail it and then i'll have to unpack it all and watch it go to waste in some other way....

See....  i need sedatives.     Be glad i drink decaff.


So the rest of the day i think i will spend trying to catch up on some light housework. Real exciting i know.

Laundry. Its clean and dry, i just hate folding it.

Later today or within the next week or so i might try and get my stuff together and list out the work that has been going on in the yard that this blog is about.
The whole thing started in February or March of 2008 when the neighbor's house burned down, thank God nobody was harmed- i always make sure to say that because i don't want anyone under the impression that i was happy that day.  Although it turned out to be a good thing for us, eventually , it was a sad day for a very nice lady who had been having it rough for a number of years.

but i'll get to all that later.

Laundry awaits!

In bloom, today only!

Passiflora "Lavender Lady"

They only stay open one day, so catching them is a treat. i have had this particular plant for almost 2 years now and this is her first bloom.

The other of my 6 varieties of Passiflora have not bloomed yet except for Lady Margaret that bloomed late spring of this year:

First planting in new ground and preliminary babble

There is a plant thats called a Jerusalem Artichoke. And if you look them up online one of the first things you will learn is that they are not artichokes and they are not from Jerusalem. They are in fact a plant that is native to America. They are also called Sunchokes and even Passamaquoddy Potatoes, although my Passamaquoddy husband and his mother have both never heard of them. But we won't hold that against anyone, because out of the three names, that is probably the most logical one.

But i think i'll just call them JA's cause that is the shortest route.

They are actually a type of sunflower.


Anyway, i planted about 15# of them today.

Edit to add:
i planted 4 varieties

From an eBay seller, i got "Stampede" and "Red Fuseau".

From Oikos Tree Crops i got "Red Rover" and "White Fuseau" incidentally that is where i got my beach plum seedlings as well. They have great prices on some rugged plants.

Well, my mom and husband did much of the real labor. They dug, spaded and used the Mantis Tiller (i love that thing) to prepare the new ground, i just dropped the tubers into the trenches and tied the fluorescent string to the sticks so i wouldn't forget where they were.

I planted that many because i always expect about half of everything i plant to be eaten by something furry.
I also took out a sort of insurance policy by sending my mom a few pounds to put in her garden as well. If something eats all mine i could recover some from hers.... thats if nothing eats hers.

We live pretty rural out here in Maine. The banes of my existence are woodchucks and voles and don't forget snails and slugs. My parents have to contend with deer, wild turkeys and even the occasional moose. They have some red tailed hawks that hang out on their property that keep the squirrels and chipmunks in check

I don't have any red tailed hawks, so i have to just hope the woodchucks spontaneously combust. Unfortunately woodchucks don't do this. So the next idea is to use Havahart traps.
Anyway, talk of woodchucks leaves me in a bad mood, so i'll get back to what i like yammering about.

Garden.

So, mom and i were outside doing the planting and hubby was getting the snowblower ready, i almost joked that he was going to cause it to snow.... and i come in and see exactly that in our forecast. But it looks to be a rain snow mix with temps in the 40's. But its still early to see even faux sneaux.

So it looks like we got the roots in just in time.

Hubby had sown some winter rye out in the yard to try and prevent any more washouts, but unless it warms up for a few days in a few days we won't get any benefit out of that effort.

So that sums up today's garden adventure.



Apples

After helping me by digging up my protogarden, my mom has taken my oldest daughter out apple picking today. I was considering trying to go (take lots of tylenol and try to suck it up), but after slipping on a wet spot in the yard and landing on my bad knee/leg, it was out of the question, tylenol won't even touch that kinda ouch.
But i should be getting a large paper shopping bag full of apples, so i can make a few pies and such.



i guess that will be it for now...

First entry

I did a text test, but i won't bore anyone with that. So i have zapped that.

My excuse for blogging?

Well i happen to enjoy writing.

I happen to be forgetful.

So writing is both a way i can entertain myself and a way to keep events, memories and plans tacked down so i can go back and remember. So blogging is something that is just as much for my sanity's sake as it is a way to share my activities with friends and family.

I tend to ramble a bit with subject matter. i tend to lose my train of thought from the beginning of a paragraph to the end, so some days i might be all organized and some days i will be all over the place.

And the blog name? Well, there really is no pond, though when it rains we do get a huge puddle in the front of our house. This is because the town we live in refuses to do anything about the drainage on our street. All the rainwater pools in front of our house!
At first we joked about it, saying we always wanted lakefront property, but as our basement began to flood at least a couple times every year and attempts to contact the responsible (irresponsible) town officials have gone completely ignored, it is becoming a true problem.

I'll probably change the name soon to something else. When you sign up for a blog it asks you to name it and i admit i wasn't thinking of a name beforehand.