Today I cleaned out a couple Earthboxes and planted garlic. The garlic is from our planting last year. We still haven’t run out of garlic. It stores well. I planted two more boxes this year. I also got out the row covers for the boxes to help with the cooler nights.
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In addition to the garlic I planted more pepper cress, mache and lettuce. The lettuce we planted earlier is doing well and has been tasty. The strawberry plants continue to produce berries too.
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Rain
The other day it rained an awful lot. The field looked like a small lake.
The garden is doing okay. We have lettuce at least. The strawberries keep producing little berries. We need to get the other boxes cleaned out and set up for the winter. I plan to plant more garlic in at least one box. I might plant a few more Fall greens and see how they do. It’s getting colder. Might need to break out the row covers.
Garden
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The garden continues to grow and develop. The lettuce, pepper cress, and kale plants are up and growing. The zucchini plants have gotten bigger but haven’t produced any squash yet. We may still get a few. We’ve been snacking (more like nibbling) on fresh strawberries as they ripen. Very tasty but also very small.
Cone Head
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Poppy Seed is a cone head again. She had another dermal hermangioma removed. This one was on her front leg. She was so loopy when we brought her home, really pathetic looking. She is handling the cone a lot better this time, though she won’t drink with it on. Bumped the water bowl with the cone and it freaked her out so she won’t go back. I have to give her supervised water breaks, watching like a hawk to make sure she doesn’t get at her stitches. The skin on the leg is tighter and I think that makes the stitches itch more or maybe it’s just that they’re in a better position for her to mess with than last time. Whichever, she seems more interested in fussing with them. Thankfully she only has a few more days before they’re removed.
Woodard Bay Ride
I’ve posted about my Woodard Bay Ride on my new cycling blog.
Mima Mounds (of dirt)
Today we visited the Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve. This is a 626-acre protected preserve of the Puget Lowland prairies. This area is covered in mounds of dirt. Mostly circular or elliptical, around 7 feet tall and 8+ feet in diameter. There are 8-10 mounds per acre.
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How were the mounds created? That’s a mystery that still hasn’t been solved after a 100 years. There are Mima-like mounds in other locations throughout the world but no one explanation works for all the sites. Everything from erosion, earthquakes, to the work of now-vanished rodents have been suggested as possible explanations. Interestingly a report by A. L. Washburn from 1988 ends with the summary that both the rodent hypothesis and erosion are the two best hypotheses — but both still need to be proved. I also find it interesting that new mounds are not being created. In this particular area the trees would be taking over the mounds area if left unchecked.
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There is a short paved loop which connects to a much longer unpaved loop through the mounds. The prairie is home to a variety of flowers and ground cover on the mounds and is popular with both bird watchers and butterfly watchers. It’s a bit drier this time of year (although foggy this morning) but there were still a few flowers.
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Along the way we saw birds, crickets and lots of spider webs. Kate didn’t much care for the spiders but they did provide a good incentive to stay on the path away from their funnel-shaped webs.
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It was an enjoyable as the path wound around the mounds, and over a few.
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