Notes For Me ( and You)

It has been a snowy and cold start to 2010. My cold frame has struggled to preserve heat – my 100W light bulb has helped, but clearly a couple of changes need to be made for next season.

(My home control software program measures and plots the temperature inside the frame and temp immediatly outside, so I get clear record of what is happening)

First of all there are a lot gaps at ground level, between the bottom boards and the rough ground. On windy days this allowed the cold air to push in and drop temperatures. Secondly, some sort of thermal blanket to drop over the glass would help. Finally, for these really cold nights, a proper heater would be nice.

Having said that, the lettuce and rocket is still alive, albeit hardly growing ( we had to buy lettuce at the store last week for the first time for months).

November 1st, and the zucchini are still producing, and actually much more welcome now than in the middle of the summer bounty. We had the last of the pototoes for dinner last night, along with almost the last of the carrots. Also on their last legs, a few green and yellow peppers.

Still to come, maybe a couple of weeks away, will be broccoli and cauliflower, along with the fall lettuce and rocket. Then it will be time to start planning next year!

Although it is now starting to get cool, we are still enjoying veg from the garden. The zucchini are still producing and there are still carrots and potatoes left. The fall lettuce are still too small to eat, except as thinnings, and the broccoli and cucumber are also still weeks away.

Next weekend I will put the cold frame out, and plant few more rows of lettuce under there – although I won’t need to bother covering it for a while, unless we get some serious cold weather earlier than usual.

Alex is making a strong recovery since his surgery ( he has a plate with 7 or 8 screws holding the various parts of his collar bone in place). He has a portable ultra sound machine that he has to use twice a day for 20 minutes to stimulate bone growth. Sounds kind of weird, but it is covered by insurance so it must have some kind of track record.

Things have been very busy, but I have finally got some time to write some stuff for this blog. The bad news is that I have this time while waiting in the reception area of Holy Cross Hospital. Behind me Alex is being preped for shoulder surgery to bolt his broken collar bone back into one piece.

A week ago he was playing pick up football when he flipped end over end after hitting someone who was kneeling on the ground. Jeremy, his roommat called us from the ambulance that was taking him to hospital. He saw a specialist on Tuesday, and the strong recommendion was for surgery. His clavical was actually broken in two places, with a small piece between.

Hopefully in a couple of hours he will be in better shape. He will be coming home with us for the weekend, but should be back at school on Monday.

On more conventional news, my fall garden is in good shape. Cauliflower, broccoli, and kohl rabi were planted as seedlings, and lettuce and rocket sown directly. The weather has turned gradually colder, but no frost as of yet.

Inside I have been playing around on the computer trying to get a weather simulation/model up and running. This is a real model, run nationally by “proper” weather folks. I expect it will be super slow on my own system, probably taking longer than real time – i.e. the model will take longer to run than the actual weather ! But it will still be kind of cool – and provide a reason to buy a faster system.

The model is the WRF
model has been developed by various agencies and all the code is freely available. Getting it all to compile correctly has been a challenge, but so far I am making progress. I have the pre-processor running, the actual forecast engine has been run once, and now I am working on the post processor stuff – to actually be able to get to see what has been calculated.

Things have been busy on all fronts lately. A new boss at work has meant an outbreak of micro management and supervision, while on the home front all the fall activities are in full flow. Both Jake and Peter are playing football, with Jake also playing soccer. Add in guitar, church school , etc and it is easy to see why we are busy driving around.

Alex seems to be doing well at the University of Maryland, only 25 mile away in College Park. Perhaps I should say he is happy and enjoying the experience. How much studying is getting done ? We will wait and see.

The garden is enjoying a new burst of productivity now that things have cooled off a bit. The tomatoes are still coming, even if the plants look near death. I have pulled all the beans and planted broccoli and cauliflower in their place. New seeding of lettuce and rocket will go in this weekend, sown in such a pattern as to allow the installation of the cold frame later in the season.

With the swimming season wrapping up tonight with the end of season banquet, we are offically in mid-summer. Mid, that is as in between swimming and football. This is our best slot for a vacation and we will be heading off for a few days shortly.

Only problem with vacation this time of year is that the garden is just coming into full flow. This means that our designated water person will be amply rewarded for coming by every other day.

So far the report on the garden would be bush beans A, pole beans B-(growing well, but the pods become too seedy too quickly). Tomatoes – still to early to tell, same with cucumbers and squash.

It has been a dry July – after all the rain before – but the past few days have once again brought on the afternoon storms to freshen up the rapidly browning grass.

This is the peak of the outdoor swim season, with various meets almost every day for a few days. Here in Montgomery County we are fortunate to have what is believed to be the most competitive, most heavily supported, summer swim season probably anywhere. Each neighborhood pool fields a team with boys and girls from 6 or 7 years old up to 18 year old, many of whom have been of at college for a year. The points scored by the 7 year old count just as much as the 18 year old! The really cool thing about the culture in which these swimmers grow up is that you are never to good to swim for your local pool.

This weekend Jake was (un)fortunate to be going head to head – actually head to chest would be more accurate, since this kid, Jack Conger, is at least 6 foot tall at 14 years old – with the USA national record holder ( 13-14) in 200 meters back. Who held the record before – a certain Michael Phelps! Of course Jake lost – big time – but if this youth goes on to fulfill his potential, we may be watching him on the TV soon.

Great weather for all this swimming – not too hot, and the cycle of constant storms we were in for a few weeks has stopped. I actually have had to water the garden now.

After a busy 4th of July – swim meet, pool picnic, and neighborhood cookout – it was nice to have a rather peaceful Sunday.  I just picked some beans, zucchini  and dug some potatoes, all for the first time.  The potatoes were on the small side, but very nice looking and tasty.

The zucchini plants were looking rather weak and pale, so I top dressed them with a little dried blood. I think over the winter I really need to get some serious manure and/or compost into these beds in preparation for next season.

I’ve been playing around a lot with the swim team web site
with the latest addition a little slide show as a preview for the photo gallery. However although the web site is running well, we are still having email issues – mostly because many companies are tagging our emails as spam, perhaps because some less than savory companies might be sharing my hosting company. So our next step is to explore using the Google Apps to handle our group email.

A couple of firsts today : First vegetable ( fruit) of the summer – a cucumber from the one plant that I had bought and transplanted – the rest were directly sown in the ground. And the first time I have had to use my soaker hose irrigation system on the potoato bed. As soon as  I had set all the hoses up – weeks a- it has been raining almost every day. However that pattern seems to have broken and the heat is on, drying things out especially for those potatoes in the pots.

Also in the novelty department – this week has seen me take my first step in the social network of Facebook. A big hit with the kids, this is now becoming a part of at least some adult lives.  Not sure if I will keep it up, but a least I have a presence in that virtual world.

Boy, this wet weather plus the end of school/graduation busyness have really put behind in the garden. However this weekend has seen at least a little catching up.

First of all I finally thinned out the carrots, which had germinated very thoroughly – perhaps because that raised, sandy bed drained very well. In contrast the lettuce did not come in very well at all – I think the seeds either drowned or were washed away.  Same could be said for some of the rows in the cutting flower patch.

I also sprayed some copper on the pototaes and tomatoes to try to avoid the bight that has been a problem in previous years.

Alex is away to the beach for the infamous Beach Week – somewhat of a right of passage for graduating seniors. We are praying he and his friends do not to anything TOO stupid, and return safe next week -even if there are stories that we will not hear about until he is 40 plus.

Beautiful weather this weekend, but more rain forecast for the week ahead.