Goodness! Things have been busy! This is going to be a long post, since it covers more than a month...
My weight kept bouncing around, so Tuesday last I tried a 5 day Egg Fast (nothing but eggs, fat and dairy for the duration)- taking plenty of vitamins, extra potassium and magnesium to make up for the lack, although I doubt I will do major damage with a short term fast like this. As of this morning, I had lost all the weight I had gained, and I'm tired of eggs, lol. 2 more days of transition (2 meals with eggs, 1 regular meal at night- tonight is buffalo wings). What the egg fast is supposed to do is this: Eggs have both choline and methionine, cheese is rich in casein; these three items help the liver to metabolize fats (in fact, a lack of these in your diet can lead to fatty liver disease), but if you eat too much carbs it tends to neutralize their effect. So hopefully, I've got my liver charged up and raring to go now.
Our watering system in the garden isn't working well, so plants are not getting all the water they need. I'm tired of trying to make these weeper hoses work; they tend to get clogged up really easily, and getting the pressure low enough that they don't blow out but still getting enough pressure to water everything just doesn't seem to be working. I didn't have any trouble using weeper hoses in my garden when we lived in California, but now it seems like they are only good for a year or so before they start springing leaks all over the place. I suspect they aren't being made as well as formerly. *grumble*
I've been thinking of trying out a variation on Mittleider's automatic watering system )
) on at least 1 bed, just to see how it holds up. I was worried about how long the pvc pipe would last above ground, but apparently if I paint the exterior, it greatly inhibits the UV effects. Anyway, we pretty much have to chalk up the cucumbers as a dead loss due to lack of water.
Once again I have a plague of grasshoppers; they riddled my chard plants to the point where there wasn't enough leaves to harvest. I bought some Neem oil, but it's a slow fix and I'm still seeing hoppers, although not as many and the chard seems to be recovering.
We seem to have a shortage of pollinators in the garden as well-- no squash or eggplant babies. The tomatoes and peppers are doing fine though since they are primarily self-pollinating. I think I will buy some mason bees in the spring; we have mason bee houses, but I didn't notice a lot of filled tubes this last winter. We do seem to be having a LOT of yellow jackets in the area though, and I know they prey on bees. I think we used to have a nest of Bald-Faced Hornets in the area, which prey on the wasps and yellow jackets.. I wonder if someone got rid of them? I got rid of one yellow jacket nest we found, using a combination of Dr Bronner's Peppermint Castile Soap and a tea kettle full of boiling water. Seems to have done the trick, since I haven't seen anything coming out of there since. But the wasp traps we put up are still attracting wasps-- so much so that the first one needs to be emptied soon; the level of dead wasps is only an inch or so from the top of the entrance cone and I think more wasps are finding their way out again.
Since the garden is pretty much a loss this year, I decided to concentrate on building up the infrastructure this year, so that hopefully things will do better next year. We weed-wacked all the weeds that were coming up in the pathways and I sprayed everything down with vinegar to kill off the remaining top growth of weeds, then covered the paths with cardboard, and have been laying down a 4 inch layer of wood chips we got when the neighbors had a tree removed. Every week or so, I patrol the paths with my pump sprayer filled with a combination of vinegar and detergent and spray any weed that dares to pop its head up. I started with a mix that included epsom salts as well, but that's actually a fertilizer and it occurred to me I might be helping the roots of those weeds stay alive longer, so I stopped the salts. Table salt would work, but I don't want to risk it getting into the soil in the growing beds. I may run a line of weed killer plus table salt along the fence edges though... we'll see. I also rebuilt one of my compost bays- a 4 foot U shape of concrete blocks- and refilled it with the not-broken-down-yet stuff from the second bay, as well as cleaning out the chicken house and adding that. Hooked up a pallet in front to keep it from spilling out too much. I managed to drop a concrete block onto my right ring finger (yeah, the trigger finger) and bruised it pretty well. The arnica I put on kept the visible bruising down, but the finger still swelled up to almost twice normal for a few days. Now I need to redo the second bay, but I need to buy some more concrete blocks- we ran out about halfway through the second course.
I'm trying to figure out what more I can do out there besides the paths, the compost bins, and the watering system. I won't have enough compost to do much for the beds until spring. I think I will put a good layer of pine needles down on the beds, since we have several pine trees and pine straw is readily available to protect the soil over winter.
Finally, our Tai Chi teacher had been feeling poorly, and it turned out she needed gall bladder surgery. She had asked me to sub for her whenever she couldn't make it; it's been about 3 weeks now-- hopefully she will be returning the middle of next week. Leading the class has been good for me- it really "set" the forms in my mind, having to teach others. But I will be very glad to relinquish the classes to her when she returns!
It is "chilly" with the dampness but, to clear and then possible more rain late. 
I am leaving for work soon, work tomorrow and HOPE, hope, hope, I can light till an area to plant on Sunday. At least a place to start some seed for transplant. 
