Patience!

Seems like the only vegetables that are doing really well are my potatoes. I just keep digging and they just keep popping up for me. The wet weather has taken it's toll on the tomatoes, for sure, as about 3-4 ripen each day. The beans are slowly coming up with a few being eaten by some animal, most likely a chipmunk or deer. I planted peas a couple of days ago and they are already popping up.

Yesterday I dug up a row of Norland Reds and afterwards, put some 10-10-10 in the area and planted four rows of carrots. I am hoping I still get a good croup sometime in the middle of September.

I have not been known as one with lots of patience. In fact, since I was quite young (I must admit), if something didn't go right the first time, I would become frustrated quite easily. I still remember putting in a door down in the basement to the room my father had built as my own bedroom. It took me over 8 hours to put in the door properly. This was before Home Depot and pre-hung doors.

Fast forward to more recent years and I am not much better. I would think age and maturity would kind of put me more on an even keel, but that is not happening.

What brings this up in my gardening blog is that while I am waiting on more of my fruits and vegetables to mature in our less than ideal summer conditions, I decided it was time to paint the house again. The last time I did it was eight years ago and it took me most of the summer. This time I decided to get some help with doing the high areas of the house, since I had no desire to go up 25 feet and look down. I had one fall at my work from 22 feet about 10 years ago that I survived somehow and still managed to then get up on the ladder and paint my house 3 years later, but no more of that at my age.

The painting has come along very nicely. I was at the Sherwin-Williams Paint store when I got into a very informative conversation with a professional painter. He gave me some very good hints, including not to power wash the house, but to use a product called Crud Remover or something like that. He also suggested using a 1/2 inch nap standard roller. It took me only 6 hours to do most of the front of the house (first 20 feet or so - about 1200 sq feet). I was psyched!

So, now I am at the back of the house where the sun hits all day long (southern exposure) and where I have some damage to windows sills. I spent today learning how to fix rotted out window sills. I first went on the internet to find some suggestions for doing this and was surprised to find little information on the topic and how most of the information did not come along with videos or photos. But that did not stop me. What almost stopped me (and here is why my heading is Patience) was thinking this was a one hour project for two windows (laundry and bathroom). Well, let's say that I was wrong by about 6 hours or so. Taking out the bottom trim (bullnose) was easier than I thought. I had to do that on one of the windows. The other window wasn't as bad and only needed some fill put in. From the information I was able to gather, wood putty was not the best for this project. Instead the article I read suggested using an epoxy, so that is what I did.

I had used an epoxy earlier this summer to fix a leak on one of the pvc hoses on the swimming pool filter system, so I knew how good this stuff works. I mixed the product (you roll it between your hands until it gets nice and warm) and then began filling in where it was needed (after I removed all the rotten wood). I then let it harden for about 20 minutes and then started sanding. All this took quite some time and was high intensity focusing because I did not want a lot of extra fill all over the place. I have a hand sander (electric) that worked really well and using 60 grid sandpaper, was able to get the fill to even out pretty well. Tomorrow I will be using 150 grid sandpaper to finish the job and then prime all of the outside trim and window. So it will be about a 7 hour job, but the savings will be over $600 (the cost of 2 new windows) and lots of additional work taking off the inside trim, taking off and replacing cedar shakes outside so that I can properly waterproof behind the new windows, etc.

Now, if I can learn to stay calm, have more patience and just move along calmly, maybe I can have some nice complete jobs in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the garden continues to grow and prosper. Today I made two pint jars of gooseberry jam that included some currants. I previously did two pint jars of currant jam, so this time around it was pretty easy to do. The jam tasted great, especially with some Flint Farm peach ice-cream I had left in the freezer. I continue to dig up Norland Red potatoes, which are bigger than previous selections and I am getting about 6-10 tomatoes a day now between the 4th of July and cherry tomatoes. Onions are starting to look nice as well and I have picked a few of those. We have had a couple of broccoli cuttings and the beans are starting to flower.