the deep moans round with many voices

1. Pepper photos and posts.

2. Thanksgiving, etc.

3. Bought groceries.

4. Acquired bus tickets for my two December trips down to NJ. (The first is for Mr. M's memorial dinner. The second is for Christmas.)

5. Boiled some eggs.

( more items under the cut )

11. Threw out my peppers that were done for the year and had been freezing out on my back porch. I knock the dirt into the little garden patch at the foot of my porch/deck, and lay the plants themselves in a small pile at the back of Downstairs Neighbor S's carport; they compost pretty well by mid-spring.

12. Cleaned the now-empty pots and stakes, and put them away for the winter.

13. Changed linens (pillowcase and towels only).

1. Talked with Upstairs Neighbor E about supplementary dogsitting and gave her my new spare key. I will drive down to NJ on Sunday and drive back Monday with Dottie, who will be with me until Wednesday the 28th when my parents will pick her up and head home while I'm at work. But my job at the rental office involves very long days and Dottie needs a mid-afternoon pee break, so I've enlisted Upstairs Neighbor E to drop by between noon and 3pm on Tuesdays and Saturdays to take Dottie outside for a bit.

On Wednesday the 21st, I will just have to take a 45-minute lunch break instead of a 30-minute break and get the person who has admin access to the timekeeping program to adjust my punch times for that day -- which shouldn't be a problem, but I didn't want to say, "Hey, you only just hired me and now I need to inconvenience you by taking extra-long lunch breaks for my next four days," because that is a good way to wear out any welcome grace period really fast.

( more items under the cut )

And now on to today's list. :)

twelve peppers, Monday, 4 July 2016



the smallest pepper, probably dying



that funny leaf patch, now more obviously not-quite-right



another leaf with issues


Last week I mentioned that one pepper was clearly smaller and growing more slowly than its fellows. Well, it just got worse and worse through the week, and then -- adding insult to injury -- got uprooted by a squirrel early Monday morning.

(Let me tell you about these squirrels. So there's an evil mulberry tree bang up against the post of my back porch, right? Which means a good half of its branches are growing right toward the house. I clip the ones I can reach, but I'm short and so is my stepladder, and I only have hand-clippers rather than a proper extendable tree-hook thingy, so my area of control is limited. There are several branches that grow right up against my upstairs neighbors' windows.

And two days ago, some enterprising squirrels investigated one of those windows, discovered its screen had a hole, wriggled through, and were gleefully tearing up the kitchen when my neighbors got home. Upstairs Neighbor E complained to Landlord Dude -- as she damn well should! -- but who knows when he'll get around to doing anything. I wish to god he'd just admit he can't handle all the necessary repairs himself and hire contractors, but apparently pigs will fly before that day comes. *headdesk*)

But back to the peppers. When I righted the poor seedling and packed dirt back around it, I noticed its stem had a funny weak/brown section perhaps a quarter centimeter long, suggesting that it's doing poorly because the roots and leaves are barely able to send energy and/or nutrients to each other. I have no idea how to fix that, or if it even IS fixable, so I'm just going to water that pepper along with the others and expect it to die. :(

There continue to be some minor leaf irregularities. I have not sprayed insecticide, so I think this may be a reaction to the (obviously completely ineffective) anti-squirrel spray. Yet another reason Bonide Repels-All sucks!

[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]

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ETA: madamehardy informs me: The symptoms you describe – a browning stem, withering leaves, and stunted growth – sound exactly like fusarium wilt, a.k.a. "damping off". It's a fungus that hits anything in the nightshade family (potato, tomato, eggplant, pepper) and is viciously destructive of basil. I've given up trying to start basil from seeds. You can, of course, use fungicide.

For tomatoes, your best bet is to look for varieties that are labeled as fusarium resistant. Tomatoes will generally be labeled something like VFN or VFNT in the variety name: that means they're resistant to the fungi verticillium, fusarium, nematodes, tobacco mosaic virus: it's a long list. Alas, there's nothing similar for peppers because no resistant varieties have been discovered

Tl;dr: Damping off sucks. It's not really under your control; you just throw away the plant (NOT in the compost) and move on.

Today I cut down two trees.

Context: when I moved into my current apartment, back in... I think 2009? Anyway, there were a couple shrubs attempting to grow along the side of the driveway, right up against the wall and foundation of the house. I probably should have just uprooted them at that point, but I don't tend to think about yardwork until things reach a crisis point, so six years later they had gotten very overgrown. The bigger one was two stories tall and beginning to encroach upon Upstairs Neighbor E and T's windows.

I'd started trimming them back a little in the spring and fall, to keep the driveway from getting clogged up and also to prevent the smaller, whippy branches from making demonic screeching noises against my windows in high winds. It was a bit of a futile effort, since my stepladder isn't tall enough to let me reach all the branches in question, but it did reduce a chorus to a solo, which was better than nothing. However! Today while I was doing yet another round of pruning, Diagonal Neighbor P walked past, noticed I was using a tiny pair of handclippers, and asked if I wanted to borrow her handsaw.

I am not normally very good at answering when opportunity knocks, but this time I was ready. :D

And so the two 'trees' are no more, the yard waste compost heap in the back yard is twice as big, and I will never have to suffer those demonic screeches again.

A good afternoon's work, I think. *dusts hands*

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ETA: Other things done today include:

1. Took Dottie on an ADVENTURE! In other words, we walked up the Cascadilla gorge trail, then came back down via Collegetown and the gorge rim sidewalk. The gorge trail had been closed for a couple years while the Cornell Plantations did extensive repairs and improvements, but it's open again now and a lot safer and better designed. (Among other things, there are small drainage channels in many stretches of the walk, they moved the entire Stewart Avenue staircase about six feet south so it's not under a persistent drip from the gorge walls anymore, and the final ascent up to the Schwartz Performing Arts Center is completely re-engineered. Also there's some nifty signage.)

2. Bought groceries and filled my parents' car with gas since I had a 20-cent-per-gallon discount. (My grocery store's loyalty card offers 'gas points' in addition to general discounts. Normally this is useless to me, but since I currently have custody of a car, hey. I will take advantage. *grin*)

3. Changed my sheets and towels, and put my laundry into a bag and cart in preparation for actually washing it tomorrow.

4. Watered my houseplants; mixed their periodic dose of fertilizer into that water.

5. Sorted and folded the clothes I want to sell or donate to charity.

6. Snipped four baby spider plants and put them in water-filled glasses to grow roots.

7. Played fetch with Dottie for about half an hour. She does not quite grasp the concept of 'bring the toy back to the human,' but I've convinced her that she should at least bring the toy back to the same room I'm in, because I do not have the energy to play keep-away for extended periods of time.

Things I have done so far today:

1. Get haircut
2. Breakfast
3. Call Susan and chat/catch up
4. Start batch of bean soup in crockpot
5. Fix most recent holes squirrels have dug in my pepper pots
6. Take, send, and download daily picture of Cascadilla Creek

Things still on my to-do list:

1. Buy groceries (get deposits for returned cans and bottles in process) [done!]
2. Write at least 200 words of fiction
3. Change sheets and towels [done!]
4. Laundry maybe??? [noooooo; this is a tomorrow task]
5. Pay internet bill [done!]
6. Talk to Upstairs Neighbors E and T about payment for their use of my driveway
7. Lunch [done!]
8. Dinner [done!]
9. Take bean soup out of crockpot around 2am [done!]
10. Get started on tax homework

...

I don't think I'm going to get through all of that, but hey, at least I made a good start! And there is always Sunday for whatever I miss today. :-)