Grandma Z Comes to Town, the Attack of the Flea Beetles, and a Mold War

June 1, 2008 - Wait, did I just say June? How did that happen? We're not ready! It seems that summer has arrived (even though it doesn't officially arrive for a few more weeks). Time is flying by and it seems we are constantly behind. I don't even make lists anymore because it's ridiculous to - you never know which random assortment of things you are going to get done in a particular day, and it very often is something that you wouldn't have put on your list at the beginning of that day anyway. Basically, as long as something gets done, it's a good day.


The first half of today was reserved for fun. We went to the farmer's market and picked up a good assortment of stuff - green garlic, oyster mushrooms, strawberries, pickles, and spinach. I'm trying to buy different stuff every week, sort of try out all the different vendors and always get a taste of what's in season RIGHT NOW. Here's a pic of all our goodies -

Then Grandma Z came to visit us! We've been very lucky so far in that many of our beloved California family members have come here to see us since our move, since we haven't had much time for a trip back to San Diego. Grandma saw the new property and got the whole garden tour and made friends with the chickens. (Apparently our rooster crowed upon her arrival - great - apparently he's guarding the hens against attacking grandmothers?) We had a lovely visit and had lunch at Bread Alone in Rhinebeck -
She's very proud of all we're doing and said she had to come see us to find out if we actually are as happy as we look in the blog. Turns out we pass the test! It's always good to hear that people are enjoying reading our stories. You can post comments too if you want (you have to sign up with Google, but it's not difficult). I'd love to get advice from people when we encounter problems in our gardens. Lots of you are more knowledgable than we are about gardening, so help us out!!

Speaking of garden problems - we have another pest! Flea Beetles. Joe says we've had them for a while, but we hadn't really noticed the extent of the damage they were doing to the tomatoes until today. Here's a pic of one of the nasty little things -
For those who don't know (like me about 5 hours ago), they're called flea beetles because they jump like fleas when you go in for them. And their damage looks like this, like little bullet holes in the leaves. We were just in the middle of a different project when this issue was brought to our attention, but something like this doesn't wait. So we stopped everything, and looked up flea beetles in every single organic gardening book we own, as well as the internet. We will not be using any pesticides in our garden so we were looking for an organic solution. The most interesting one we found was to put some sort of grease on a piece of cardboard and hold it above the leaves, getting the beetles to jump on the oil, get stuck, and die. Cool. So we tried it. It worked pretty well - Joe was far better at it than I. He says he can think like a beetle. Uh huh. And like a chicken too. He's a regular Dr. Doolittle. :) Anyway, we caught a bunch, saved our tomatoes for today, and went on with our previous project.

What we started working on today is getting our summer home ready. In the months of July and August, Joe and I need to leave my mom's house. Our sister-in-law Elizabeth is coming to NY with her kids Lorelai and Axel, and while it's a big house, it's not exactly that big. So Joe and I are going to take a camper, move it over to our property, and live in that for the summer. Seems fun, right? Sleeping on our land, cooking out every night, listening to the stream, having a little adventure. Only issue is that this camper that we have access to causes me to have a severe allergic reaction. I have bad allergies, particularly to mold. So about a month out from our move, we decided it was time to tackle this camper and try to figure out how to get it clean enough for me to live in without wanting to scratch my throat out. Turns out the problem is pretty substantial, and we ended up with a wrecking bar -

Basically, the whole ceiling needs to be ripped out because the insulation is full of mold and mushrooms from getting wet, and the wood is all rotted out. Which means we have another big old project on our hands. Yay!!! Hopefully we're going to tear out all the bad stuff and end up with some sort of killer custom summer home. (I'm gradually learning optimism). So, Joe spent some time working on the mold issue, while I spent a good couple of hours scrubbing couch and bed cushions. And so we will add one more project to our list - or we'll just get to it when we get to it, just like everything else.