Blueberry defense
Earlier I posted briefly (here) about the bird netting dome I had constructed over my 6 blueberry bushes using electrical conduit as a frame. This was back in the 3rd week of June just as the berries were beginning to ripen.
So how has it worked?
Very well thank you, at least after I reinforced a section of the netting with a second layer.
The mockingbirds were persistent and could find their way in through any modest tear in the netting that was reasonably close to one of the blueberry bushes. It seems most birds do have good vision but we generally forget that in cases like this they are probing the defenses from 6-10″ away. So yes, they can see 3 or 4″ gaps that escape the human eye, especially when the human is standing back and admiring the seemingly foolproof solution to blueberry thievery that he has just constructed.
The funny thing is the mockingbirds would find their way in and eat a berry or two (per the Timmy the bored well driller across the garden who passed the day watching birds and bugs do their things) then their skittish nature would kick in and they would want to return to a perch to do their noisy mockingbird thing, the bird world equivalent of “yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah….” a few dozen times.
The only problem was they couldn’t remember how they got in after they panicked so they would quit eating and freak out looking for an escape. Timmy the well man let them out a couple of times that first day and so did I, each time discovering the additional tear they had already found and used. Eventually I quit mending the nets and bought some new bird netting and solved the issue with a second layer over the “holy” section. Lesson learned, don’t cheap out and use last year’s netting, it has holes in it.
Two catbirds moved in about 10 days ago and have been working the yard. They are cousins to the mockingbird and very clever in their own right, but they gave up pretty quickly after probing some. The mockingbirds still give it a shot now and then as the berries are quite blue at this point and they can’t resist. I conceded a berry to one last night; he could almost reach it from the outside and eventually figured out that standing on the net (vs the conduit frame) would weigh the net down slightly and move him close enough to reach the prize. I even saw a hummingbird hit the net yesterday evening; he bounced off the netting a couple of times before moving away toward the red blooming crepe myrtle in my neighbor’s yard.
Worth it?
Sure. These were 3 gallon plants when I put them in the ground (fall of 2009) and I plucked off the blooms last spring so that the plants could funnel all their energy into growth. This year, a respectable crop is in the process of ripening and harvest.
Patience is required, but you must defend the blueberries.
There are no meerkats in my house……
But you could have fooled me…
(A picture of meerkats standing up, for those who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about.)
The Constitution of the United States of America
After all, somebody should read it occasionally.
Happy Independence Day.
Potato Bandito
(WordPress referrals, be sure to read hasty update @ end of comments)
I couldn’t resist any longer and hand probed two potato beds for tubers…
The Red Pontiac sample spud was nice; the yukon gold was colossal.
There will be a potato harvest this year after all….
In the meantime potato/elephant garlic soup is in the fridge.
2 hot, 2 humid, 2 tubs of garlic
As I type this at 10:30PM, the outside temperature has finally abated to a balmy 83. The humidity stands at a similar level and earlier in the evening I just couldn’t make myself get back out to work on the well piping and trench project when the evening temperature lingered over 90.
Wimped out.
Completely.
Instead I decided to move the garlic inside for trimming and sorting. The two tubs didn’t look like much when I brought them in and I thought maybe I’d get the whole thing completed by 10:00. Riiiiiight…..
I started with the smaller bulbs and worked into the medium ones, culling the split/separating bulbs into the “eat me soon” pile and the rest into a box to be further sorted once all are done.
The tubs
The trim table
The progress (the “eat me soon” pile is the one next to the tub)
I stopped with just more than half the harvest to go. (Maybe I’m just looking to avoid a hot Tuesday evening outside.)
Dirt + water =
I’ve spent most of the last week parting out the lines that were to go into the trench from hell and then steadily trying to get the installation completed. As it stands I’m @ 90% with both ends needing a little more attention.
Actually, both ends need a lot more attention as there is additional trenching to complete- the manual kind of trenching that 50-something year old financial types can practically do in their sleep. (OK, maybe in their nightmares?) Anyway, I completed the connections for the conduit and 2nd water line for the middle 85% of the trench and started covering it up.
The drawbridge to Lizzie’s and the pipe connection cart before Sunday’s rain:
In the middle of last week regular drenching thunderstorms started rolling in and the red berms of dust paralleling the trench became an immovable terracotta mix with a tar-baby consistency. I never thought pushing dirt back into a hole could be so much fun.
The first section of fill dirt is discovered to be mud:
(The heat and humidity this weekend combined to an oppressive level and the fan followed me wherever I stopped to work for more than 3 minutes. )
I stopped in the afternoon to take a break in from of the fan and found myself dozing out to this view – underneath the garlic on lizzie’s porch:
What was that? Was that thunder?
Yes.
So much for finishing…. the monsoons moved in and I was done for the weekend.
I had a little time though, so from under cover I trimmed and sorted out shallots and a little garlic almost ready for storage (then gave up for the day):
Aqua
We now have decent water production right at 1:00 ft. It is still rather yellow or mustard colored but that should flush clean. I believe I have a video to edit and post but that won’t happen today.
Now that it looks like I’ll have something to pump, I rented equipment and trenched back from the well site to the back of the house. I have some manual labor ahead to get under some previously pulled conduit, wire and copper gas lines.
But largely the main trench is done and I’ve started on the PVC main that will run to the basement. While I don’t plan to use this well for normal household use, I am going to locate the pressure tank in the basement (no freezing, had an experience with that @ the mountain property.) Additionally, the plan is still to install and open loop ground source heat pump that uses this water as a heat exchange medium. More on that later…
In the meantime, a couple of shots after the main rough trench was being cut and the pvc gluing was about to ramp up.
After spending the day int he sun I am whupped, cross eyed and too tired to proof much of anything, so please forgive the typos and related I won’t catch until tommorrow…
Connection Issues
Seems our router has taken a dump.
Behind cohutt’s Fence is adrift and inaccessible to me indefinitely.
I have resigned as home network admin here and assigned the duties to the GA Tech senior in residence for the summer.
It’s OK, I’m married to an engineer
My engineering marvel to manage the mud run off perplexed my well man a bit; apparently he was planning on letting the water run off then shovel the mud up into piles to be manually disposed of later (once dried a bit). He was going to wheelbarrow the mud down across the alley a bit and dump it into the tangled vine covered fill area at the back of the commercial lot next to me. A noble gesture for sure and probably a plan that could be executed without a hitch.
But as nasty and unkempt as the section is, it isn’t my property to dump on and the landscapers working on the commercial lot next to it had just dumped all sorts of holly bush parts there. Even though the owner wouldn’t notice even if he looked at the property every day (my guess he hasn’t ever looked at it), I didn’t want to potentially complicate things so I waved him off.
My scheme allowed the mud to skim and spread itself out down a long channel down to a settling pool in the lower back corner of the yard. I figured I would allow it to do this and then shovel the mulch back over it once it had dried and settled a bit. Assuming we hit water soon, there is going to be a lot of bailing that will dump thousands of gallons of water into the slough as the well is finished up. The settling area will catch the last of the finest clay particles and allow the water to seep out and be absorbed without staining everything in sight.
So here is the site this evening after another day of drilling and a nice thunderstorm. Note the grey rock residue accumulating; we are into solid rock now and today punched through a very hard layer into a more fractured layer. (We like the deep cracks- it is how water seeps into a well.)
So how well did the mud disperse and distribute itself in this very tight space today? Not bad-
The settling pool is at the end of the run and was much more full before the rain came. No mess escaped and the water didn’t overflow into the alley, my neighbor’s property or any of my garden beds.
Am I qualified to design and build this sort of marvel in a single evening? No worries.
I’m married to an engineer.
Behind cohutt's fence 
