The thing about blogging is that sometimes you’re at a loss for what to say after a weekend of lounging around with your cats, watching a Top Gear marathon on BBC.  Hardly makes for exciting reading, right?

I CAN tell you that we have gotten new neighbors, and Lucy and Orzo helpfully went over to personally greet them.  As it turns out, the woman over there is terrified of dogs.  *Sigh*

If we are very lucky they will be much like the previous neighbors, whom we barely even knew were there.

As for the neighbors behind us (the church) we discovered that (adding insult to injury) the clearing for the cemetery behind us was only part one.  Part two is the absolute clearcutting they will be doing to make themselves a new septic field for their new building (oh and the new neighbors want to clear cut as well – buhbye privacy!).

Thank goodness for cheap trees at Arbor Day Foundation. Looks like we’ll be buying spruce trees by the ton!

I did some more weeding in the gardens and pulled out all of the failed/failing squash plants.  The squash bugs beat me thoroughly, yet again.  I tried picking them off every day, twice a day.  It did no good.  I even tried the dish soap spray.  It made the plants look even worse.  Next year I’ll be using floating row covers and Neem oil.

The thing about Neem is that there’s no solid evidence of how it affects honeybees, so I have to be very careful.  The squash will only get sprayed at night when the bees are in their hives, and not at all once the plants have flowered.  Unfortunately it’s too late to try it this year.  The second planting of cucumber and zucchini I put in in July hasn’t grown very large due to the cooler weather.  If we don’t get a heatwave for the remainder of summer and into September I doubt they will fruit at all.

My tomato plants are looking great at the moment, and I’ve pulled a few nice cherry tomatoes off already.

Unfortunately the only varieties that are doing well are the Chadwick Cherry plants and the Mortgage Lifter plants.  None of the Cherokee Purple or San Marzano made it.

To hopefully remediate my garden woes I’m working on the soil this year.  We have had historically poor soil; fortunately we have crazy amounts of compost!  The area that was the lambing pen this year has broken down into the blackest, slickest dirt you could hope for (hay plus wood shavings plus lots of pee and poop sitting in the sun alllll summer).  I’ve been digging it up with the tractor and dumping it on areas of the gardens that are done for the season.  We also have plenty of fallen hay (full of poop from the livestock) that I will till in this fall and leave for next spring, in hopes of helping build better dirt for growing.

But for now my focus is on fall. The spots where the squash was pulled out were planted with brussels sprouts, parsnips, kale and chard. Garlic seeds are on order, and strawberries will be ordered soon for a spring bloom.

My mums are already blooming (crazy, right?).

Once they start selling these in stores I’ll buy a few more to continue lining the walkway out front with them.

This little jealous mister hung out with me while I tried to clean the craft room a bit. I didn’t get very far.  I got all of the coming year’s school stuff sorted and that was about it.

We DID make time to roast marshmallows.

Orzo and Lucy were on hand in case we dropped any.

And maybe to try and sneak one from the bag if Maddie would just look away.

There’s a whole lotta kitty lovin’ going on.

It’s going to be a sad day when she can’t fit in the napkin basket anymore.

Of course, it will be nice to have a place to put the new napkins I made.

And these ones for Halloween:

I guess as it turns out that for a weekend where it seemed like not much happened, I had a lot to say!