Rural Gardening: August On The Homestead, 1 by AZgrammie

AZgrammie wrote:
Am way behind in reading Dave's Garden posts, for all manner of reasons. On the plus side, my son and DIL and I put in 800 baby lavender plants here at the ranch. 3 months later, they are doing splendidly. I'll upload a picture. Some are already putting forth blossom buds, but we are supposed to cut them off and let all the growth go into the roots, for 2 years before we let them bloom. On the negative side, my tiny community is fighting our county, that is determined to approve up to 90 giant wind turbines, 1/4 mile from those homes that are on our southern boundary. Their minds are made up and all the facts we give them are to no avail . We keep reminding them that they are committed to protect property values of EVERY citizen, not just the enormously rich and powerful rancher who has leased his land to the wind farm developer, but the P&Z commission and the Board of Supervisors just sit and listen impassively and then vote for the developer. Heart-breaking. The rancher owns 228,000 acres in this county with nothing but cows on them, but chose this spot right next to the only residences for many miles around on which to place wind turbines. Seriously, we are way out in the boonies and nobody comes out here unless they really want to. It isn't like the rancher didn't have anywhere else to lease to the developer.

When not weeding the lavender patch or trying to change the Bd of Supes' minds,
I pick tumble weeds -- my fingers are sore & bloody -- their official name is Russian thistle, and I had to chuckle at Darius" comment "Get rid of legumes, blackberries, Russian thistle, . . .) because with 80 acres of tumbleweeds it ain't easy! Thank goodness we do not have a stinkbug problem -- my veg garden is doing well, mostly squashes but lots of other stuff too, lots of tomatoes. I only planted a little corn because last year alll of my corn was ruinded by those little tiny black beetles that arrive with the rainly season.

Then of course, we had a major rainfall with lots of lightning -- a nearby strike fried the controller to my solar water pump. I expected to have to haul water for the vegs, lavender, and me for a couple of weeks, but our local solar co happened to have the controller I needed so it is already in and pumping. Also had to replace a remote meter that was inside the house. In all, it was a $1,009 hit. I am just thankful that the solar pump was not damaged, and the rest of the house solar system wasn't either.

So it's been really busy around here. Oh, almost forgot, I took 2 weeks off and flew to Fairbanks to help one of my sons and his family move to colorado -- my DIL and I 1 grandson, with 3 cats, 1 big old dog, and a bird in a cage drove down the AlCan highway to colorado. Had a great trip and didn't lose one cat! Anyway, happy gardening to y'all.

Grammie