What have you done today in the Garden?

Well, I had no idea that English had Romantic roots, but I do know that as the language developed there came Romantic language bits and bobs in, such as French and Latin. Languages are so interesting.

 

Unbelievably the weather is still holding out here. I worked in the high tunnel today. found a few more sweet potatoes to pull while cleaning up. picked up all the vines and weeds from the sweet potato patch. weed eated the weeds between the rows, picked a few tomatoes, pulled the cucumber plants, cut down the castor bean plant at one end of the house, the thing is like a tree out there... it has a trunk on it, threw away some refuse building up around here. it is amazing how little junk it takes to make something look messy.
Spread the clover seed in the garden where we picked up all the ground cover and plastic mulch.

 

Wow you were a busy bee Carolyn! You must be bushed now. So, about this clover; is that for soil retention, nitrogen? Will you till it in come spring?

 

I had a bag of seed so I spread it over the garden for a cover crop. it will get tilled under come May.

 

My husband & I have had a very productive day putting the landscape to bed for the winter: lawn areas are mowed & leaves blown onto garden beds, dahlias & cannas unpotted and stored in the basement in peat moss, all wrought iron furniture covered for the winter, etc. I won't bore you all with the details, but we are feeling very satisfied with ourselves today!

BTW, I found a sale on shrubs at Loews: 70% off! I picked up 4 'Olga Mezitt' rhododendrons (relative of the well known PJM) for $9 total. Quite a scoop.

 

To add my 2 bits worth to the language debate. As i understand it, English is a Germanic language. The sentence structure is germanic. The romance side was grafted on after William the "conqueror" invaded britain and introduced French. So english is germanic with a lot of latin words, I found french the most difficult language that I tried to learn. Dutch, German and Scandinavian languages are much easier.(not Finnish though).

I found an old english recital of Beowulf. I think Sjoerd will understand more of it than monolingual english speakers. It is clearly Germanic.

 

I picked enough Kale for a quart freezer bag. It must be too cold for the Cabbage worms. When the Kale was soaked, nary a worm was seen.

 

GP I have discovered that too. I am trying to decide if it is worth my while to cover the kale, Swiss chard & leeks with a row cover to extend the season.

 

Cayuga, it depends on how much kale you have, I suppose. I only planted a small square / rectangle, just enough for freezing a few bags and for eating during summer. I think we may just bank some leaves around it and see how long it stays edible.

 

Odif, I am surely not bilingual. I only understand a word now and then.

 

Worked on cleaning up the garden some more. I started in the high tunnel but the sun came out and it warmed up outside to only needing a long sleeved shirt not coat or gloves. so I worked on pulling the peppers and outside tomatoes out of their rows and pulled up plastic and mulch. Another 50x50 area cleaned up.

 

Makes me very glad our clean-up is finished. Just putting leaves on which have been chewed up fine by the lawnmower.

 

Growingpains, I did not understand much of it either, but if I only spoke modern English I would not understand much. Yesterday It was snowing with 100km an hour winds. I harvested potatoes,beans and flowers. It is all over now for the summer stuff, still I have never harvested beans past mid October before.

 

I know this vid, Odif. The pronunciation is pretty good, don't you think? I can only understand some individual words here and there. Beowulf is a piece of literature we studied in high school here. I found the story interesting to study as a child because of its age and the the story line. There is no getting around how much hard work it was to get through it though.

 

That video was total Greek to my ears, but the sound of the language is beautiful....in a crusty sort of way.....Oh I just heard a word I can undetstand: Beowulf!

I am still adding mulch to my various beds. I also brought in my pots of herbs. We'll see how long they survive the indoor climate & my husband's harvesting fingers.