Thursday, August 5, 2010

Getting ready for the harvest

Tomorrow is the day I harvest the tobacco.  I'm just not sure where I'm going to put it to cure.  The original arrangement was that I would plant and cultivate; Tom would harvest and cure.  With the crazy hours he's working there is no time for him to do it so I'm apparently doing the harvesting and curing.  I think we're going to put them in the garage, hanging from the rafters.  The book says to take each individual leaf, run a wire through it and hang it that way but I remember from my childhood tobacco farmers hanging the whole stalk from the rafters of the barn so that's what I'm going to do.  Getting to the rafters with a garage that is overfull is going to be a challenge though.

I brought in some green beans from the garden today.  Not enough for everyone but certainly enough for me. Once the tobacco is harvested I can plant more green beans and some lettuce.  My tomatoes are still green but thankfully no blight.  Apparently tomato blight is near epidemic proportions in our neck of the woods.  Probably because my garden is on higher ground than I had it in the past and it drained without any flooding at all.

I've got some poison ivy growing near the clothes line.  I tried some regular weed killer and it's wilting it a bit but not really killing it so I sprayed it again today.  While I was at it, I got all the thistles I could find, too.  I'm really disappointed in myself for not doing more outside.  I hope I'm in better shape next summer, thinner and healthier.  Coming into summer on the heels of H1N1 and having that trigger a flare up of the fibromyalgia put me behind.  I'm finally getting to the point where I can function but that's still not a high enough level.

I got Zach some Benadryl ointment for his mosquito bites.  He's miserable, itching all the time and the pain from them is incredible.  They are swollen nearly to hive proportion and he's up to over 40 bites on his feet and legs now.  He used a Skin So Soft repellent last night and it didn't do any good either.  Neither did the Off he used the other night.  I bought him some garlic capsules to see if that will change the flavor of his blood and skin and repel the nasty critters.  He just needs some relief.  He says the Benadryl is helping some.  Nothing has helped before so that is a good thing.  We tried Calamine, baking soda and water paste, OTC steroid creams...nothing has helped.  Hopefully he'll sleep tonight.

I'd show pictures but he's shy.

I didn't get any gas for the mower today.  I'll have to get that tomorrow.  The clover is getting high so I need to mow.  Zach can't get any shoes on for the bites so I'll have to mow again before I harvest the tobacco.  Then I need to do laundry, too.

Supper tonight is pizza from the store.  I managed to get some things done today which normally would be a day of recovery since I did so much yesterday but I felt fairly well so I just plugged away at the yard a bit. Now I need to just clean up the kitchen a bit and vacuum and I can call it a day.

It's cool enough to knit so I'm going to listen to the writers/director's documentary for The Two Towers tonight and maybe watch Memphis Beat OnDemand.  Time to heat up the oven for the pizzas.

TTFN

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