Carpe Diem Acreage

It's warm and muggy feeling today at 25c (77f), which for our northern climate is fairly warm. Daughter and friend wanted to sleep in the tent in the back yard tonight, but I think we have to nix that since it looks like there is a storm on its way.


Plants are coming along wonderfully. As you can see from the photo below, I will have to add soil to my container potatoes, and the lettuce is growing like crazy.

Potatoes

Lettuce

Our compost has had to have some adjustments to it. I noticed that the crows are picking out the yummy items. I saw one scratching underneath the wire mesh, so I dug a small pit and sunk the compost into it and packed the clay around the outside. The crows continued to dig, so I had Daughter ring the outside with some bricks. The next day the bricks were flung a meter (3 ft) away from the compost and the clay was dug out from underneath. Obviously that was not a crow! After packing everything back into its place, I sprinkled a mixture of crushed red pepper flakes and black pepper around the outside of the compost and on top of the bricks. So far so good.Bricks around the base of the compost

I surprised a mother mallard and her ducklings in our lagoon. They surprised me too, because I was expecting only to see the tadpoles in there. It is a good thing that I decided not to sprinkle the mosquito pellets in the lagoon. We decided it was more important to have the tadpoles than to battle the mosquitoes (which were very bad for a few weeks, but seem to be getting less now).

Yuck, the lagoon is not really a wonderful place to be raising ducklings. I know that a lot of people have no idea what a lagoon is - due to my line of work I am often asked this question. So, here is the (my) explanation: a lagoon is part of a sewage waste treatment system that is used where the is predominately clay soil and underground disbursement of water is not possible. The waste runs into two underground tanks where the solids are separated to be broken down by bacterial action and the grey water is drained into an above ground lagoon (pond) where is evaporates.

Don't try this at home....

In my wisdom decided to try to get my bread machine to knead a double batch of bread dough, because I wanted to bring my new neighbour (with two babies) a homemade bread. Obviously it didn't work; I was left with a goopy lumpy mess. I thought it might be like drycleaning.... you know, when the label says 'dryclean only' but if you're careful you can hand wash it anyway. When the bread machine instruction say one batch only - take heed!

I did manage to knead by hand and get the two loaves of bread I wanted. And, my new neighbour was very happy.