All the potato plants were lost in the last freeze. All of them. Maybe they’ll come out again, but I’m not betting on it. I’m so disappointed. Those were my second generation plants, and those were the only starters I had for them. Now I have to start all over with the potato project in the spring.

I am not enjoying winter gardening at all. NOT AT ALL. Who knows what plants I’ll lose tonight when it really, really freezes. I’m not replanting anything. I’m not even going to be paying much attention to the garden beyond making sure it has water (which I haven’t had to worry about thanks to all the rain). Things either live and grow or they die and get plowed under in the spring. This will be the last winter garden. I’m just going to start with the super-early cool season before spring (that I missed last year, not having beds yet), plant like crazy during spring, and muddle my way through summer. No more gardening when it’s cold. It’s too depressing, and I don’t enjoy being outside in the cold anyway.

Can’t believe all my potatoes died when they were well covered and it barely got down to freezing. Wah!

There’s a 70% chance of snow in Austin on Friday. 70%! Yipes! That’s just crazy. We sometimes get snow in late January or early February, but this early in December seems really, really early.

While normally, I would be thrilled about seeing any snowflakes at all falling from the sky here, since it’s so rare, I do need to figure out what to do about the garden. The potatoes will have to be covered. Well, actually, everything needs to be covered. Sure, some of the plants are supposed to survive down to 20ºF, but I don’t trust my bad luck. Or rather, I do trust my bad luck to leave me with a bunch of dead plants.

I spent some time out there today trying to determine what was going to be the easiest way to cover my beds. Looks like it will be bamboo cut and bent to create domes over the two beds over which I will toss some plastic and/or old blankets. The potatoes are going to be trickier, but I think I can work something out. They don’t have to be covered for days, just Friday and Friday night. It’s supposed to get a little warmer on the weekend, though Lin may need to toss the stuff over them again on Saturday night (though I don’t know that I am leaving until Sunday as the weather may be bad for driving Saturday morning if we really do get snow).

See, this is the part of winter gardening I am not enjoying. During the spring and summer, all I have to worry about is bugs, weeds, and watering. If a storm blows in and tears stuff up with wind, there isn’t much I can do about that, so I don’t really worry about it. During the winter, there’s all this freezing weather stuff that has to be dealt with, and considering how wet our winter looks to be this year, having snow more than this one time isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

I don’t know. I have to come up with some kind of plan by tomorrow evening. Since Lin is home from work early today (though still on the phone working), I think I’ll get his input and convince him we need to go to Home Depot for some of those cheap plastic drop cloths so I can figure something out to protect my plants.

Ugh. Still not enjoying the winter gardening, and even with a hat on, my ear was not happy being out in the cold … though my ear is much, much better today (yeah).

I am just not getting into fall and winter gardening as much as I do spring and summer gardening. The weather hasn’t even been especially foul or cold, but being outside during this time of year goes against my natural hibernation instincts. Then there’s the fact I have never grown any of these plants before, so I have no idea if they are on track or too small. They seem to be growing so slowly, and they seem too small. Sorry, but I’m just not that interested in fall and winter gardening, and I think next year there will be a few months of no gardening at all when the chill air arrives.

All the same, I worked in the garden today. I didn’t intend to work in the garden, but I got out there and decided to pull up the old bean plants and chop down the basil. Once I had that done, I started in on working the soil and removing the weeds and old mulch that hadn’t decomposed. I probably wouldn’t have worked on that as long as I did, but Lin came out and started puttering around near the garden area. He’s such a bull in a china shop, I felt the need to keep an eye on him as he worked near my plants with things like extension cords and power blowers.

So Bed Two is finally ready to plant some lettuce and fennel. Totally the wrong time to do that, but I’m going to do it anyway. Maybe some more of the other winter plants too. Like more arugula. The first batch I planted is still tiny but already blooming, and I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be doing that. Already in Bed two are three volunteer Black Seeded Simpson lettuce plants. There was only one, but today I found two more growing in my walkway between the beds, so I transplanted them into the bed. I also left one pepper plant that seems to still be producing peppers, as well as the one basil plant the last of the pole beans are growing on.

After Lin and I finished puttering in the garden area, it didn’t look nearly as depressing as it did when we started, but I still find it hard to care. Even the brightest sunny day during the winter doesn’t make me feel the same joy of being outside as a somewhat gloomy summer’s day. I’ll muddle through this year, but unless I get the most awesome harvest of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and arugula, chances are high I will not be doing this again. I’ll just get started really early in the spring instead with things like peas and such.

But it was kind of nice being outside for a while today. Not wonderful, but nice … mostly because Lin was out there with me being his usual goofball self.

I just did the evening fire ant check. I am pleased. I appear to be winning this war more quickly than I anticipated!

The original monster colony has not a single ant moving anywhere near any of the mounds or tunnels. The second monster colony has a few workers wandering around somewhat aimlessly, but mostly there are just Ghost Ants hauling off the spoils of war –dead ants and dead ant eggs. That leaves the two mounds in the far back yard, which I guess I’ll get started on tomorrow.

This is working much better than I expected and a whole lot faster. I fully expected it to be “kill some here one day, they move there the next” kind of thing. But no, I seem to be getting rid of them pretty quickly. Faster than most of the standard poisons, actually.

I guess now I’ll have to add “walking the whole yard looking for fire ant mounds” to my weekly task list … right up there with “walking the yard and chopping down baby pear trees.” I will have a fire ant and pear tree free yard! Yippee!

One of the piles of dead ants. Just look at all the winged reproductives I slayed! Woo hoo!

I decided to walk the whole property and look for fire ants. Might as well see how bad it is beyond the part of the yard we use, right?

Oh … my … god.

There’s one more collection of three well-established mounds that are close enough to one another, I’d guess it’s another multi-queen colony. The mounds themselves aren’t very large yet, so they are first on the list for boiling water in the morning. They are about the same size and composition as the one mound I totally eradicated with a mere one gallon of hot water.

There’s one non-mound group that took up residence under a wooden post I had at the end of one of my garden beds. I moved the post, and maybe they’ll move on to a location I can get to them easier. Can’t very well use boiling water near my plants’ roots.

There are a couple of very small mounds here and there I will get to before they are large, but aren’t a top priority.

Then there’s the mother of all fire ant mounds, formally known as the compost heap. Right on top is a neat and tidy little mound. I poked the leafy heap, and sure enough … nothing but fire ants. I ran away quickly. It’s a good thing I didn’t just walk back there and stick my hands into that to get some leafy matter for in the garden. I shudder to think what would have happened. I don’t think boiling water is going to work on that one, which isn’t going to stop me from trying anyway. The water should run through the leafy matter easily, and it’s entirely possible none of their actual nest in below the actual ground level.

Glad I went out and checked the whole yard^†. Now I know how big the problem is. Pretty damn big, but I think I can get rid of a lot of them just with the boiling water.

Now that awful huge one I have been working on for a couple of days? Diminished activity, little to no mound rebuilding, and many, many dead ant bodies lying in piles. I seem to have at least damaged them pretty well, so I will keep at it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I got rid of all the fire ants in the yard without using any poisons, organic or not? I’d really like that. It’s worth the trouble of boiling some water and carrying large pots back and forth a few times every morning to not use any poisons at all.

So the Fire Ant War goes on. Hopefully, it will be over soon, because I have to get back to the War on Pear Trees. Yes, the pear trees have made a new appearance again. Fewer than before, but still … I want none of them anywhere in the yard!

1. † Didn’t check beyond the woodpile though. After encountering the compost heap frull of fire ants, I was pretty much done with wanting to look for fire ants. [↩]

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t buy the kill-them-this-instant fire ant poison. I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach while reading the labels and warnings that I suspect is the same feeling a truly devout religious believer gets when they know they are about to commit a mortal sin. There was a feeling of terror too. Do I really want to have anything to do with something that almost suggests one should wear a HazMat suit while using it and then burn the HazMat suit afterward and enter a chemical decontamination unit to have the top layer of skin seared off … just to be safe? I’m barely kidding.

Have you read the labels and warnings on these things?! I knew they were bad, but I didn’t know they were THAT bad.

So it’s back to boiling water for now, and this weekend we’ll just have to find a local source for the Greenlight with Conserve that is organic-safe. I don’t care if it takes a couple of weeks to kill the ants. I’d rather not put anything as hazardous as regular fire ant poisons into my environment. Too damn dangerous.

Speaking of boiling water, I think I’ll put a few pots on now and spend some more time killing ants this afternoon. Since they are so kind to bring out their dead every night, which gives me a nice accounting of how well my efforts are succeeding, I have noted that two queens have been killed, a slew of workers, larva, and eggs are dead, and a bunch of the winged reproductives have fallen as well. So, I am making progress. Maybe I just need to keep at it for a few more days and won’t need any poisons at all, organic or not.

Glurg. Glurg. Glurg.

When pouring water on fire ant mounds, that’s a good sound to hear as the water pours in an vanishes. That sound lets me know I’ve found the main chambers and passages. I haven’t heart that sound yet on the monster colony, but I did find one other lonely mound on the other side of the garden, which I’m pretty sure has now been eradicated.

The monster colony is huge. It has multiple mounds, and no doubt multiple queens. I have yet to find the main chambers and passages, so all I’ve been doing with the boiling water is killing off workers, eggs, and larva … by the thousands. When I went out yesterday morning to see if my previous attacks on them had done any good, they were bringing out their dead and putting them on piles around the mounds. For all the ant murder I committed, it didn’t seem to put too much of a dent in their numbers. I am not kidding when I say this colony is huge.

I am so against using poisons that are harmful to the environment in any way, but I have come to terms with the simple fact that I need something fast-acting and deadly, and I need it now. I have given myself permission to use whatever necessary to get this problem under control. Given my over-the-top allergic reaction to fire ant stings, it’s a matter of safety and survival. If they would have stayed in the far back yard, they could have gone on living their happy little any lives, but no … they had to invade my personal living space. Now they must die. All of them. Everywhere in the yard. I want them all gone.

Luckily, there aren’t any mounds in the garden proper or anywhere I plan to plant in the future, so I am free to use whatever deadly poison I wish. I won’t be broadcasting it broadly around the yard though. Just going to treat mounds as I find them, and smaller ones will continue to get the boiling water treatment, because doing so brings me some measure of evil joy. So today, poison will be bought and ants will die in the (hundreds of) thousands.

And hopefully the garden will dry out enough today that I can get out there and get Bed Two cleared out and planted. I am so late on doing this, but there hasn’t been anything I can do about it. It’s been too damn wet. I wanted my soil to hold water, and well, it does. The plants like it, but it does make it hard to do any tilling or turning of the dirt when it’s nothing but mud. But the bush beans have said they are done, the basil has been done for a while, and I have got to get the last few things planted before it gets too chilly out there. It may already be too late. I’m pressing forward anyway. It’ll be a learning experience.

Bed One is doing great though! All the plants look healthy and strong, and weeds have been at a minimum. I need to thin the arugula and stake the fava beans. Fall gardens grow so slowly though, it’s not nearly as exciting as a spring garden. Still, I started it, so I will finish it, and it will be nice to have some fresh homegrown veggies at some point in the distant future. The very distant future.

The cucumbers also look great, but even though they are flowering like crazy and have been for weeks, not a single cucumber to be found. I am extremely disappointed, and I don’t know that I will be devoting any space in the garden to cucumbers in the future. Maybe I’ll plant a few in large pots on the front stoop. Maybe not. After three tries at cucumbers and only three total cucumbers having been harvested, I am not inclined to want to mess with them again.

While the late planting of okra didn’t produce enough okra to eat, it did produce enough for seed. That was really the point anyway. I have a few more pods of seeds from the original seed batch, and it looks like I will have at least a couple of pods of second generation seeds as well. I’m going to have to do some research to discover what it is the okra is lacking in the garden, because every single plant has been stumpy and short. Not at all like the okra plants I remember from my youth.

And the potatoes? Four of the six starters have produced fine looking plants. One never sprouted, and one sprouted but looked so mutated I dug it up. These starters were from my first potato harvest, and there’s no way of telling what I will end up with in the end, but I’m fairly certain we will end up with edible potatoes of some sort. The potatoes are a long-term project anyway. Starting with a hybrid and pulling out the traits of the original parental lines that please me won’t happen quickly, but I do expect to be closer to my “perfect” potato when I plant again in the spring. Eventually, I will have small, round, white and thin-skinned, golden-fleshed potatoes with small eyes. It’s just going to take some time to get there.

The current joy of my garden –that volunteer tomato plant– is the healthiest tomato plant I have ever grown. The lesson here is that nature does just fine without any human intervention. After I have poisoned the ants, I hope to find enough good dirt lying around to fill one of my ten gallon pots and get that transplanted into something with room for roots. The old wagon isn’t going to be a good place for that precious plant once it gets larger and the nights get colder, and I would love to have a couple very late tomatoes and some seeds from whatever type of tomato so easily grows on its own.

Now you know why I haven’t been posting much the last few days! The weather has been beautiful, and I have been outside soaking it in and puttering in the yard. Sure, I haven’t been doing what I’d like to be doing –tilling the soil and planting seeds and pulling weeds– but once those damn fire ants are under control, I’ll be able to be out there doing whatever I like without fear of having to rush to the emergency room for epinephrine^†.

And now to get on with my day. There’s grocery shopping to be done, ants to massacre, and another beautiful day to enjoy being outdoors! It’s going to be another lovely fall day, and I better enjoy them while I can. Winter will eventually arrive, and then being outside isn’t going to be nearly as much fun.

1. † I really need to get an epipen. It’s going to cost me a hundred dollars or so to get one, and I’ve never had one in my life before, but the recent increase in fire ant activity has made me nervous enough to feel the need to have one. Did you know that the majority of people who have horrible reactions to bee stings are also just as allergic to fire ant bites? The reverse is also true. I’ve never been stung by a bee, but with a beekeeper living a few houses away and there being bees around all the time, I have begun to get nervous about eventually getting stung by a bee, and I don’t want to witness my reaction without an epipen handy. [↩]

The exact number of pots of boiling water I have carried to the back yard and carefully poured into the egg and larva filled mounds of fire ants this morning is unknown. I lost count when it hit double digits. Let’s just say the number is high. Many fire ants have died this day. Only two sunk their fangs into me.

Since it was such a beautiful morning, I decided to go get that gardening work done. I did get some weeding done, and two of the potato plants have had their dirt piles piled higher, but then I saw the mother of all fire ant mounds. The largest fire ant mound I had ever seen with my own eyes. They had invaded a ten gallon pot with a basil plant in it, and the mound was in the pot and growing along the sides. Then I saw the off-shoot mounds nearby. The horror!

So I set about filling, boiling, pouring, refilling, boiling, pouring … over and over and over. I’ve been at it for hours. I’ve finally had to stop. My arms were getting tired, and I was afraid of dropping a large pot of boiling water on myself (or heaven forbid, a cat who decided to get in the way at the wrong time). Also, the fire ants that aren’t dead are all kinds of upset right now, and they are everywhere. Safer for me to just call it a day on the fire ant massacre.

I think since these particular mounds are not directly in my garden or in soil I will ever be planting in, tomorrow when I go to the store, I will be buying the most deadly, most toxic to life as we know it, most horrifying fire ant poison I can find. This weekend we will be going around to as many stores as necessary to find the organic stuff that is safe to use around food plants. But something has to be done about this mega-nest NOW. I may have put a dent in their numbers, but I am 100% certain I did not kill the queen or destroy their community beyond repair. They have to be gone, and I don’t care what it takes to make that happen.

That has been my day thus far. Pouring endless pots of boiling water on fire ant mounds. Now I am hungry, sweaty, and tired. It’s time to take care of those things, and then, owing to the post-antihistamine wooziness I am beginning to feel as I type this, I think I’ll be finding something mindless but useful to fill my afternoon hours.

And tomorrow … the true Fire Ant Massacre begins. It’s WAR!

When I got back from the grocery store, I remembered I needed to water the garden, so to the garden I trudged. While giving the last bed a good drink, my eyes happened across a plant growing in that old wagon a converted into a planter for flowers this summer. A plant that wasn’t a weed like all the other plants in the wagon. A plant that looked vaguely familiar even to my non-eyeglass-wearing eyes. I wandered closer to get a better look.

My garden gave me a gift!

A volunteer tomato plant has sprung up all by itself! No way to tell what kind it is, but it is a bush type, and the closest bush type tomato that was growing near the wagon was a Homestead (heirloom). This is the first really exciting thing that has happened in the garden for months!

Of course, it can’t stay where it is. There’s only three inches of dirt in that wagon, and it’s going to be getting colder soon. Saturday I’ll be putting it in a pot so I can move it around and bring it indoors if I need to when it gets too cold^†, but we may very well have some fall and winter tomatoes after all. It’s just too awesome!

Thank you garden for giving me a totally cool gift today. I needed it. Now I am excited about going out to the garden again, which I really haven’t been terribly excited about doing for quite a while now.

1. † I’ll be doing a lot of garden things on Saturday. I still need to clear out the basil and plant the regular lettuce, as well as clearing out the weedy future fourth bed to plant the fennel. Yes, going to be a busy day on Saturday. [↩]

A lot of people in Austin are griping about the water usage restrictions not having been lifted yet, because “It’s been raining!” and “The drought is over!” No, it’s not over. Our water-shortage issues have not been resolved. We are still in the midst of a drought, and some rain isn’t going to magically fix that.

Austinites have made good use of their galoshes and umbrellas this fall, but the city is still suffering from a historically high drought.

This assessment is based on studies conducted by the Lower Colorado River Authority, which controls the raw water resources in Central Texas. Their research shows that as of August, Central Texas was facing a deficit of more than 1.5 million acre-feet of incoming water over the past 20-month period in comparison to the historical average.

“On average during this period, we would have seen about 2 million acre-feet come in,” said Emlea Chanslor, Lower Colorado River Authority spokeswoman. “During the previous 20 months, it was 477,000 acre-feet. The rain we’ve been having is great, but it’s not enough to serve the whole city. That’s why we’re going to be conservative and continue to recommend to consumers that they cut off their lawn-watering as much as possible.”
–The Daily Texan

Why the heck do they need the watering restrictions lifted anyway, since it has been raining? I have only had to water my garden once over the course of the last month, and my lawn is growing like the weed-filled expanse of ground it is. It’s been nice not having to be out there every day watering, but as happy as my garden may be about the rain, we need more, if we’re to continue having water coming through our plumbing … which is far more important than a garden (or a lawn).

Speaking of gardens, I need to amble out there today and have a look. I haven’t been out there in days due to the situation with the neighbor’s large dogs and the fact the rains have kept my yard a perpetual mud pit that’s no fun to be in (not to mention the damn fire ants^†). Plants actually grow just fine without daily tending, though I expect there to be some monster weeds I need to deal with. I also haven’t been able to pull out the basil and plant the lettuce or fennel thanks to the dirt being just too wet. I really need to get to that soon. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow, provided it doesn’t rain again today. Rain is in the forecast again though, so I doubt I’ll be slogging around out there too much.

1. † And what really sucks is that all the poisons say not to use them right before or after it rains, because they are less effective, so I haven’t been able to do anything about the fire ants. It’s been raining too regularly, like every couple of days. Thankful for the rain, on the one hand, but not thankful on the other. [↩]

I don’t think I am going to enjoy gardening during the fall and winter as much as I do spring and summer. It just doesn’t feel right, like it’s the wrong time to be growing things, even though I know Texas is perfect for growing things all year long. I also find I am not nearly as excited about going out and checking my plants and puttering around out there. Maybe it’s just because it’s gotten off to a rough start, and it’s still such an overgrown, horrible mess out there.

I guess I’ll just keep trying to get things in order –get the weeds, ants, and other pests gone– and plant the rest of my seeds for this season. Then I’ll just have to try to keep myself interested in keeping up with it.

Other than the fact the whole garden is a mess right now, everything I planted is growing. We’ll be eating some radishes in a few more days, and there are oodles of beans on the bushes. The fall and winter things all look healthy and fine (amidst the weeds and dog foot prints and ant nests). The stuff I didn’t expect to do well isn’t doing well. I thought I would try, and now I know not to bother trying for one more go at cucumbers and squash so late in the year.

There is one thing out there that made me smile and get excited: one tiny little lettuce popped up in Bed Two where lettuce has never been planted! It must have self-seeded from the Black Seeded Simpson in Bed One this spring and sat around waiting for the temperatures to be right to sprout. How lucky it popped up in the area I was planning to plant lettuce in too! I’m going to try to save it when I clear out that side of the bed. I’ve got a head start on the lettuce!

So yeah, there is one thing in the garden making me happy at the moment. Everything else? Not so much (yet).

I need a nap.

It’s 7 am on a Sunday, and I am awake. I am simultaneously typing this post, making espresso, doing the dishes, and making bread. Well, I’m not sitting at the sink with my hands in water washing dishes and typing at the same time, the coffee machine is really making the coffee, and the bread is just sitting on the work table bubbling as it has been doing for some hours now, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, as soon as the sun is up enough to see clearly, I will be trudging out into the back yard to gather together whatever remains of poor dear Peyton the Possum and tossing them into the trash bin (after thoroughly wrapping them in a trash bag or two). No, I didn’t do it yesterday. I am fully capable of procrastinating on things I want to do, so just imagine how good I am at procrastinating on things I don’t want to do … like picking up pieces of dead possum.

If I didn’t have a garden out there that needs tending and watering, I’d be willing to bet poor Peyton would be lying out there in pieces until spring, while I totally avoided going into the back yard all winter. But alas, I do have a garden out there, and it needs to be watered and weeded today. Therefore, I have to pick up Peyton this morning, no matter how badly I don’t want to do so.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that one day I had a whole dead possum in my back yard, and the next day I had a few smallish pieces of a dead possum in my back yard. My mind keeps running through all the possibilities of what exactly has been in my back yard that can either eat or make off with large pieces of possum over the course of a single night. It’s making me a little nervous.

The first possibility, of course, is the neighbor’s dogs jumping the fence again to finish what they started when they killed the poor thing. On the one hand, at least it isn’t some wild creature I don’t know about, but on the other hand, the neighbor’s dogs killed, ripped to pieces, and ate a large animal. Somehow, I don’t find that very comforting.

Another possibility is a raccoon. I haven’t seen any raccoons since the first winter we lived here, but that certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Do raccoons eat dead animals? I don’t know. I do know I don’t especially like raccoons, because they are aggressive, even when not cornered or threatened.

And I suppose the neighborhood cats could have gone at the corpse as well. There are a number of roaming kitties on our street, but it seems to me it would take a whole bunch of really hungry cats to almost finish off a large possum overnight.

Maybe it’s a combination of all these things. Perhaps even vultures, as we do have them around here as well. Who knows? It’s the not knowing that is bugging me. Whatever it was, it made clean work of the possum body, and that tends to mean sharp teeth. It’s bad enough my pleasant garden where I go to unwind has been tainted by a dead possum, but knowing there’s something in the area capable and willing to eat said dead possum, well … it’s making my pleasant garden a little less pleasant and relaxing to be in.

Speaking of the garden, it’s so depressing I can barely talk about it.

First it rained too much, and everything got waterlogged and didn’t get enough sun. Additionally, I wasn’t able to get out there for weeks, and there are weeds and fire ants all over the place. Then we had a storm that destroyed some plants, followed by the neighbor’s dogs tromping around in it killing some more plants. I also haven’t been able to get out there to build trellises for the beans or cucumbers, so they are all over the ground and not looking good, and who knows how many aphids are out there having the time of their life. I haven’t been able to check for bugs either. I’m sure there are some.

But the ground is finally no longer squishy when I walk on it. In fact, it’s dry enough I need to water the garden today. So I have to get out there this morning and get things done! Maybe I can make my garden a slightly less depressing place with a couple hours hard work. I hope so. I miss being out there, but I’m not so certain I am going to enjoy gardening during the winter as much as I do during the spring and summer. We shall see how I feel about it once I get things under control.

First task though is dealing with the pieces of Peyton, and then weeding the bed for the fennel and planting those seeds (way late, but I’m doing it anyway). Next watering everything a little, and after that weeding the rest of the beds. I can’t do anything about the ants just yet, because I haven’t found the organic stuff I want to use locally, but maybe I’ll carry a bunch of pots of boiling water out there again and deal with them that way. I did manage to kill off that one huge nest of them, so that works well enough for now.

I really don’t want to go deal with dead possum this morning. I really, really, really don’t. But someone has to, and that someone is always me.