Currant events
Aug. 13th, 2020 21:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillHoly moly -- there's currants in them thar hills!
After going up on the south side of the Annex under the apple trees, to pick loganberries (a venture I would have discouraged if I'd known in advance), Jenny informed me that there are some red currant shoots among all the grass and weeds. I went up to look, and she's right! I had thought they had died out years ago. Apparently the once-robust bushes went thin about twenty years ago, and from the look of things, they've been puttering along with a loose network of surface stems all over that slope. I unearthed a half-dozen canes pushed down by the grass, but nothing as coherent as a "bush".
Still, where there's life there's hope. I gather that Ribes wants acidic, well-drained soil with a lot of organic material... which sounds a lot like what the blueberries want, actually, and does not describe the slope below the Annex. Nor does it fit the side of the path where the last small gooseberry sits. I'm now thinking out plans to grab some of the better-rooted canes and stick them into large pots -- maybe dig up the gooseberry entirely, I've never been fond of such a thorny thing being next to a well-traveled path -- and see if I can give them a good year, then place them again in low raised beds full of compost or at least leaves/grass/horse bedding. I may put some wire along the bottom of the beds, as they could be battling the gophers as well. Compost, chicken manure, and regular water may work a miracle for them, as they're otherwise tough little critters.
In other news, I finished my first gate. It's gotten two thick coats of 2:1 mineral spirits and boiled linseed oil, and I hung it on the empty passage at the near end of the current chicken pen, which had previously been barred by a roll of fencing. It works well, and I'd say it looks good except for how much its newness sticks out like a sore thumb around here. It'll look better after a year.
The no-see-ums got me yesterday evening. Apparently long undisturbed grass and twilight is the magic combo in the dry season; I need to gear up if I'm working until the light goes. Meanwhile, I'm making use of my calamine lotion again.
The thieves got all but one of our spades -- and the only fresh can of WD-40 we had. sigh.
I'm starting to work on the chain across the driveway, but the soil there is dry and rocky, and there's a limit to how deep I can dig with a mattock. I may end up digging a good portion of the hole with a hand trowel, at least on the upslope side; the downslope side is closer to the stream and, hopefully, easier to tackle with the auger I found.
I'll be dealing with the water box during the hot weather this weekend, then maybe I'll take a day or two off next week. My therapist agreed that even if I'm only doing a few hours at a time, it's probably not good for me to be working every single day. I discovered how hard it was to live at "work" when I lived on campus for college, and this is similar. Maybe I'll go out to the coast, or go driving on some of the little side roads I've never explored around here.
After going up on the south side of the Annex under the apple trees, to pick loganberries (a venture I would have discouraged if I'd known in advance), Jenny informed me that there are some red currant shoots among all the grass and weeds. I went up to look, and she's right! I had thought they had died out years ago. Apparently the once-robust bushes went thin about twenty years ago, and from the look of things, they've been puttering along with a loose network of surface stems all over that slope. I unearthed a half-dozen canes pushed down by the grass, but nothing as coherent as a "bush".
Still, where there's life there's hope. I gather that Ribes wants acidic, well-drained soil with a lot of organic material... which sounds a lot like what the blueberries want, actually, and does not describe the slope below the Annex. Nor does it fit the side of the path where the last small gooseberry sits. I'm now thinking out plans to grab some of the better-rooted canes and stick them into large pots -- maybe dig up the gooseberry entirely, I've never been fond of such a thorny thing being next to a well-traveled path -- and see if I can give them a good year, then place them again in low raised beds full of compost or at least leaves/grass/horse bedding. I may put some wire along the bottom of the beds, as they could be battling the gophers as well. Compost, chicken manure, and regular water may work a miracle for them, as they're otherwise tough little critters.
In other news, I finished my first gate. It's gotten two thick coats of 2:1 mineral spirits and boiled linseed oil, and I hung it on the empty passage at the near end of the current chicken pen, which had previously been barred by a roll of fencing. It works well, and I'd say it looks good except for how much its newness sticks out like a sore thumb around here. It'll look better after a year.
The no-see-ums got me yesterday evening. Apparently long undisturbed grass and twilight is the magic combo in the dry season; I need to gear up if I'm working until the light goes. Meanwhile, I'm making use of my calamine lotion again.
The thieves got all but one of our spades -- and the only fresh can of WD-40 we had. sigh.
I'm starting to work on the chain across the driveway, but the soil there is dry and rocky, and there's a limit to how deep I can dig with a mattock. I may end up digging a good portion of the hole with a hand trowel, at least on the upslope side; the downslope side is closer to the stream and, hopefully, easier to tackle with the auger I found.
I'll be dealing with the water box during the hot weather this weekend, then maybe I'll take a day or two off next week. My therapist agreed that even if I'm only doing a few hours at a time, it's probably not good for me to be working every single day. I discovered how hard it was to live at "work" when I lived on campus for college, and this is similar. Maybe I'll go out to the coast, or go driving on some of the little side roads I've never explored around here.