Wrapping Up the Season

Guess summer finally made it to the ranch while I was in Tokyo. I came back to severely heat-stressed plants.

"You let them all die!" I wailed to Big Dog.

That comment pissed him off completely.

"I was slaving all day, every day in the 90 degree heat!"

He claimed he needed to cut back the trees from the edge of our pasture and the oaks around our house. I suspect he couldn't leave his new pole saw alone. Either way, he managed to ignore the plants. ("You're always so protective of them and don't want me to do anything. Now you're upset because I didn't. Weren't they on auto-water?" "Yeah, auto-water for the kind of temps we'd had all summer. NOT for a heatwave!" We bickered for days.)

So my much-anticipated tomato season was pitiful indeed, but the few that actually made it were fantastic. If only I didn't have to wait another year for great tomatoes! But wait! Maybe I don't. Because......

We now have a greenhouse!

"If only we'd opened the kit and read the assembly instructions earlier," Big Dog laughed, explaining our project to the DogFather. "We got the road guys to come and build a level pad for the thing, and THEN we opened the box only to find that we were supposed to EXCAVATE an area for the base of the house."

Yes, always read instruction first. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble.

We weren't about to excavate anything out of the pad. All we could do was shored up the base with the sandbags from last winter and hope the entire house doesn't blow away.

The house plants and other cold-sensitive guys have been moved into the greenhouse, I've set up auto-watering there, and we are getting ready to fly south. It's wrap-up time here at the ranch.