Redemption, five minutes before midnight

 

Looking east over the lower half of the potato patch. Personally, I think this is a very "artsy" photograph.

There I was, moping. I just could not pry myself out of the recliner. The sky was gray. I had a heating pad on my neck. We were at the end of a (nominally) five-day dry spell even though my location had a 0.2" rain squall the day before yesterday.

I had planned to till the garden but I had checked with a shovel and the soil was too wet, too soft.

The longest spell without rain in the ten-day look-ahead is two days, and I need three honest dry days to be able to get onto the garden with the tiller.

Finally, while Mrs ERJ was off on errands, I extricated myself from the recliner (which has a tiny fragment of a Black Hole in the frame, thereby creating an anomaly in the gravitational field) and half-heartedly toured the orchards and garden. The sun had FINALLY come out five minutes before midnight, so to speak.

My plan was nothing more than to start mapping out all of the woodchuck holes. 

Then my luck turned

I stumbled across three feedlot panels that did I did not recall that I owned. SCORE! Then Mrs ERJ joined me and helped lift the 16' by 52" panels out of the weeds and the back-fill from a woodchuck hole.

Walking past the 2026 potato patch (about 4000 square-feet) I lamented that it had been too wet to till. Mrs ERJ peered at it and observed..."It looks drier now."

I looked at it and she was right.

Then Mrs ERJ said "It is 7:00 and it doesn't get dark until 8:30. Maybe it would cheer you up if you tilled some of it?".

I cautiously tilled the top half of the patch where I expected it to be drier.

Then I tilled the bottom half.

The hardest part was getting started. 

As I returned the tiller to the barn I saw Mrs ERJ trimming grape vines. I was wearing a tee-shirt and jeans. She was bundled up in a parka and a knit cap. We looked like we were two or three USDA zones apart.

Hemp products for old dogs

Zeus is struggling this week. He forgets that he is old. He gets excited and starts jumping and then his hips remind him that 12 year-old German Shepherds shouldn't do stupid stuff like that.

For a dog of Zeus's size, he is supposed to get three of these a day. Link

Quicksilver and I went on a "field trip" to the local pet store and purchased a "hemp" product advertised to help old-dogs with joint issues.

The results have been promising. His mobility is much better after three of the chews and he is barking at the pretty, young Labradoodle that is walked down the road.

I am not sure they are appropriate for dogs with impaired kidney function. They are very salty and taste like ginger.

Tagetes

Tagetes is the genus name for a group of plants that include the common "Marigold". 

It also includes a couple of plants used in Latin America as flavoring for beans and other staple dishes. Tagetes lucida has many names, one of which is "Mexican Tarragon". French Tarragon is difficult to propagate from seeds and "Mexican Tarragon" is close enough in flavor for many people and the seed germinate with abandon.

Tagetes minuta is commonly used in Andean cuisine and is sometimes called Huacatay or Black Mint. It is now grown world-wide as a seasoning.

The reason I mention this is that I was looking at my seedling trays and was struck by the fact that 90% of the seedlings are of species that originated in the Western Hemisphere with the Happy Rich broccoli being the single exception. The other "A-Ha!" was that I was growing three species of Tagetes...Tagetes erecta (aka "African marigold"), Tagetes lucida and Tagetes minuta.