Another Garden Update

The weather has been ungodly and I think (but am not certain) that I was bitten by a tick and that caused me to get unbelievably ill, starting about 10 days ago.  First, the weather: after being reasonable most of August, the past week has been unbearable.  It is hurricane weather off the Atlantic and we have to suffer for their sins.  It is hot, sweaty and when it isn't bucketing rain is is oppressively humid--hence the tick experience, I think.  The plants love it  and everything is growing like crazy, but I can't keep up with trimming, pruning and staking stems so everything in the garden is slumped over and a big sweaty mess--except where fat pants, the ground hog, has trundled over stems and snapped them in their search for tender shoots to eat.  In theory, it is supposed to cool down early next week but an old geezer's creeky knees would be a more reliable source of weather forecasting than weather.com is.  The other night we were told there was a 100% chance of torrential rains, hail, lightening and dangerous winds from 2 am until about 5 am--yet when we woke up the ground was dry.  Then midday, when it was expected to be cloudy and clear, we had pouring rains pretty much non-step.  Today, no rain forecast and midmorning the skies went black and the clouds let loose a flood. So planning outdoor work is a non-starter. Second, about two weeks ago, I was outside and felt something bite my stomach, just under my ribs.  I assumed it was either an ant (we have two sorts here: the cheerful big black ones and the angry tiny red ones--I blamed the red kind) or a spider. Later that evening, it itched and there was an obvious mouth bit hole right where the itching was the worst.  I'm not bothered by mosquito bites (I don't like them, but they don't cause me to have an allergic reaction) so it wasn't that.  Then, the next day, a sort of rash developed around the bit.  And for the next three days that circle rash got bigger and bigger, and the itching got worse and worse.  So I went online (always a risk) and looked up tick bites and it looked NOTHING like that: no "bullseye" pattern and no pain (all web sites were clear: tick bits HURT, they do not itch).  Well, mine itched like crazy.  After 7 days (with the bite/rash looking exactly the same and the itching unrelenting) I got the craziest set of neurological problems: dizziness, nausea, splitting headaches that wouldn't get better even with fistfuls of pain pills, bone aches that kept me up all night because I couldn't get comfortable, hot/flushed face but freezing cold body, feeligns of intense anxiety alternating with sadness....Yes, all the symptoms of tick bites.  So, on the second day of that I went to an urgent care place in Burton which is free for us because it is connected to Hurley Hospital and no one is ever there.  When I went, the only other person in the waiting room was just being called in.  The doctor I saw was ambivalent about it being a tick bite--maybe yes, maybe no.  But, like all urgent care doctors, he was quick to prescribe antibiotics and I started taking mine as soon as I had picked up the bottle from Walgreens. I felt a bit better each day until today, and now I feel like I am backsliding--another sign of tick bites.  The only good part of this is that the chances of it being a "deer tick" (the kind that carry Lyme disease) is very low.  I still have 5 more days of the antibiotics so I haven't given up on them working yet.  But this is getting extremely tedious.

These arrived a few days ago but I haven't had the energy to dig a bunch of holes (and actually am a bit afraid of ticks now) but here they are, the tiny compost tubs I mentioned in an earlier blog entry.  Here is one with a lid on:

And here is one without the lid:

As I said, the idea is that you sink the things up to the rim and fill them with alternating compost and dry stuff (leaves, stems, whatever) and let worms do the work for you.  I've never had a compost pile I didn't hate as the tree roots in our backyard grow into the piles through the bottom and take everything before we had a chance.  The compost would just turn into a giant maple tree root mass--though, admittedly, our trees are always robust.  So I am hoping that these are both tree and ground hog proof and easy enough to use that we will actually always put the compost into them every time we empty our kitchen tub.

I have no idea what this is other than it is some sort of squash thing:

We are still getting strawberries.  The only problem is that I can't reach most of them because the tomatoes have taken over the back corner of the yard.

And here is a small glimpse of our tomatoes, finally:

And here: 

After complaining that we have loads of green tomatoes but never any that ripen, Simon confessed that he has eaten every single tomato he has been able to get his greedy hands on.  His pathetic excuse was that he "thought you [me] didn't like tomatoes!"  Yeah, that's why I spent abouty $300 on heirloom seeds, seed trays, lights, water timers and soil and have been working on these since February.  SO annoying....