More Planting Progress

 It's hot -- 92 degrees is Ohio hot.  I still made progress on planting and gardening.  Below is an old kettle from my great grand parents.  It was used to make apple butter back in the day.  It now is retired from cooking due to a crack down the side, BUT it allows for draining and makes a great planter.  It has marigolds and volunteer cilantro in it this year.

I accidentally bought the above Christmas cactus above at a clearance price.  I thought they were the cactus that you would keep outdoors all the time.  Guess they are the kind that doesn't tolerate below 32 degrees.  I will have to bring them in for the winter.  I did find the pink watering can to replant them.

The little flowerbed in front of the house is holding two tomatoe plants -- one slicer and one sweet minis.  There's three sedum plants, spearmint, and lemon mint that I add to my teas.  There's one sad little pepper plant.  Yesterday I planted super tiny and cheap clearance begonias.  I see the cats have already started to dig them out and bat them around... woohoo... NOT.

See, newly batted plants out of the ground...

Here's Grey the Duck visiting the new coral bells planted on the side of the newly moved chicken coop.  These plants were a steal at 50 cents each.  I was definitely at the right time at the right place at that grocery store.  I still need to work on the back of the coop.  The bricks need to be removed, the piece of wood needs painted, and the dirt needs filled in.  It's too hot to shovel right now.  

Here's the coral bells that I purchased to replace the ones lost in the move.  These are caramel.  The ones in the above photo are fire, crimson, and something else...  The dead-looking stems between them is chocolate mint that I purchased on eBay.  They are not looking too good, but because the roots looked good when I planted them, I'm going to hold out hope.  They didn't seem to smell like chocolate at all.  We  shall see.  I kept it away from all the other mints.

Bring on the volunteer pumpkins!  All of the new few photos below are pumpkins that came up from the moving process.  All of them are NOT on our property, but I'm hoping the new neighbor doesn't mow down this far.  We shall see...  There will be no weeding for me -- just watching.

For the third day in a row I have been able to start my Mantis by myself.  This time it took a little over 30 pulls... but it got going and kept running fine.  It didn't seem bogged down this time.  Hopefully I have run most of the old gas out of it.  I tilled this new area to put the melon patch.  Hopefully it will get planted today.  I feel like I'm getting started with the planting so late in the year.  I still have hope for it to produce.  I had to wait because of all the moves.  I'm sure raccoons and groundhogs will be happy for the buffet.

On Tuesday I tilled and planted this little patch up in the big field.  I could watch the pool as I finished adding water so that it could make it up to the filter while I was on top of the hill.  Hopefully Xenia, sunflowers, and Mexican sunflowers will bloom here.  I'm not sure what "Mexican" sunflowers are, but the lady that I longarm quilt for often gave me a little jar of seeds.  Fingers crossed.  I did notice the crows were interested in the area after I was finished.

Yesterday we got to finally swim in the pool.  Believe it or not, the water is already clearing up.  We have well water.  It looks icky, but we really just need to use some Metal Free and it will be nice and clear.  There was a noticable improvement since the water is high enough to run the filter.

We finished the night at bowling league.  Normally he bowls three games.  With upcoming camp and baseball he pre-bowled two more weeks since they weren't that busy at the bowling alley.  We planned on bowling six games and then coming back sometime the following week.  Well, the coach suggested he just go ahead and bowl for THREE weeks last night.  That was a lot.  He was tired.  BUT he did it, AND he improved his average.  He averaged 131 -- his starting average just a few weeks ago was 110.

I'm hoping he will sleep in a little and I will get more gardening in while it is cool this morning.