Evil Maniacal Laughter Goes here.

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MWAHA MWAHA HAHAHAHAMWAHAHAHAHAHAHA









And that's pretty much the story of our lives here at home for the last half a week. We've been working in the vineyard, for the most part.

It has been stinkin' hot and muggy. Whew! We have been putting in as many hours in the morning as possible, and doing school in the afternoons and evenings instead.

We took a trip to the Ag Extension last week with our leaf, whereupon it was determined to be either downy or powdery mildew, in addition to the black rot of which we were already aware. Demons, demons, everywhere!

No problem, she says. Just scoot on down to the Co-op and buy some CAPTAN and some Immunox. The CAPTAN will get rid of all evil molds, fungi, and mildews, and the Immunox will boost the plants' health, thereby making it fit as a top notch heavy-weight to battle disease and grow big and strong. Insert whistling and skipping here.

Unfortunately, the smallest CAPTAN is 5 pounds and over $30 dollars. The Immunox was a different story. The guy at the Co-op didn't even TELL me the price, he instead made a phone call to find out if there was a generic brand for me. There was! It was much cheaper! - only $80 dollars for the smallest package....

I said skip that, thanks.

By the way. Did you hear that the price of food is expected to rise 40% over the next decade? That's why we're peddling so hard now!

I did make one purchase that I did not expect. They have apparently come out with a Sevin XLR or something like that, and the co-op recommended I get it. It has a duration of 2 weeks, even through hard rains. As it is right now, we have to run out every time it sprinkles and respray with regular Sevin. This ought to save money in the end, as well as time.

I also asked if I could mix the CAPTAN with the Sevin, and the Ag Ext office said 'Yes". That's good. Now I don't have to juggle spraying, and I am hoping the CAPTAN will last longer, mixed in with the XLR as well.

I am so far from my hopes and dreams of organic food any more. But this is war!!!





Did you know, that if you put on 3-D glasses in preparation to watch "Meet the Robinsons" on TV, and discover that it is not going to be shown in 3-D and you leave the glasses on for about 15 minutes anyway, your mind eventually adjusts your vision to begin to balance the two different colors?

Furthermore, did you know that when you take OFF those glasses, after wearing them for about 15 minutes, then you alternately close your left and right eyes, you will see more red in the eye that had the blue lens, and more blue in the eye that had the red lens?

Not that I did that or anything. I'm just sayin'...

Here is our 2/3 of the way done point in the vineyard. Each one of these rows took an hour, and there are fourteen of them.





WooHoooooo! All done! Again. Until next time....





Still shopping for disease resistant grapes!

~Faith

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New Look to the Blog

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How is it?

I like it better than what I had before, but it seems to take a lot longer to load. My dashboard kept telling me it had something wonderful for me to try, but it was not working so wonderfully. The preview at the bottom never did load.

Not sure if it will stay this way, I was just playing with it.

Don't you love the Sweet Pea time of year?





We loaded up our 'tractor and trailer'. It's our giant rig, ready to take on the care and husbandry of our little corner of the great big creation.





First stop, planting some cukes and zuchs we got on sale at Lowe's, replacing the ones that have not grown. My cuke seeds from last year did not sprout at all, and the squash bugs have done in about half our zucchini plants.

I love these beds. You walk down, pull the mulch away, drop the plant in, and you are done. Cukes...





Putting in the zuchini...





Then it was down to the barn to give aid to the horses.

We let the chickens out in the barnyard. There are our two surviving chicks from the broody hen. We have too many eggs, so we didn't want many anyhow.





The face flies have been awful this year. Of course, now that I took the camera down the horses kept shaking their heads, so you can't see the hundreds of flies that cover their faces, encircling their eyes, and making them miserable. Here's Ginny, our very clever, mischievous, and trouble-making filly.





Bronco does not even make a dent! I put this on and if fifteen minutes the flies are back in full force.





So I bought the big guns. Well almost. I bought the medium guns, because the big guns are 30 dollars a bottle.

Here is a roll-on that is supposed to last for days. If I can keep the flies off their faces for a few days, even through sweat and rain, I'll be satisfied. The bottles are 10 dollars each.





We also bought these drop applicators. You dribble a few CCs here and there every couple of weeks and I believe the product enters their system, making them less tasty for pests. I've used it in the past and it was helpful. I think this package was about 25 dollars. It should last 6 weeks for the two of them.





The roll-on seemed to help right away. I'll let you know how it goes when I check them again. Time to change out the water.





Then it was time to prune and spray grapes. Michael took a break to bring the kiwi vines up across the arbor.









Whew! Need an iced tea break. It's hot, muggy and uncomfortable out here!





The black rot.









And we've got some sort of mold, mildew, fungus, or something. Front and back...









This meant a trip to the Ag Extension office. The Japanese beetles are all over, so we sprayed the grapes and fruit trees.





Lots of grapes. But will we get a harvest? I may rip them all out and plant Mars only. A blue seedless, resistant to black rot.





Thursday night we were back to our usual schedule.

Young people having fun before the guys head off to their class.





And the girls began a class for themselves.








We discovered that the game Mad Gab is remarkably similar to trying to communicate with a very persistant eighteen month old.

Hilarious!

Geraniums intoxicate Japanese beetles.

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Thanks to my fellow blogger at Going Yard, I found this article on the sad, sad situation of habitual narcotic use on the family lives of Japanese Beetles. They just never learn.

Hatred.... It's a strong word. But I feel it for these beetles. I like this article.


Geraniums intoxicate Japanese beetles.


Several bites of a garden-variety geranium geranium, common name for some members of the Geraniaceae, a family of herbs and small shrubs of temperate and subtropical regions. Their long, beak-shaped fruits give them the popular names crane's-bill (for species of the genus Geranium, , and a Japanese beetle falls to the ground in a stupor stupor that lasts some 8 hours. It's hardly a great way to avoid predators or get on with beetle business, like reproduction. Yet researchers now find that the beetles never learn. They choose geraniums over perfectly good linden leaves and get paralyzed day after day.

Researchers described the knockout effect on Japanese beetles in 1929, notes Daniel A. Potter. He and David W. Held, both of the University of Kentucky Coordinates: The University of Kentucky, also referred to as UK, is a public, co-educational university located in Lexington, Kentucky. in Lexington, have studied beetle learning and the sad effects of geranium intoxication intoxication, condition of body tissue affected by a poisonous substance. Poisonous materials, or toxins, are to be found in heavy metals such as lead and mercury, in drugs, in chemicals such as alcohol and carbon tetrachloride, in gases such as carbon monoxide, and on family life. Their results will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata.

In theory, insects with wide-ranging tastes are the most likely to learn to avoid noxious foods, according to the few studies that have tested this idea, Potter says. However, Japanese beetles eat nearly 300 U.S. plant species but don't avoid geraniums.

The flower petals, especially from plants in full sunlight, seem the most narcotic narcotic, any of a number of substances that have a depressant effect on the nervous system. The chief narcotic drugs are opium, its constituents morphine and codeine, and the morphine derivative heroin.

See also drug addiction and drug abuse. , Potter reports. His most extensive tests were of red geraniums, but flowers of white, coral, and other colors also slammed the beetles. So did a water-soluble leaf extract.

A geranium "is like candy to them," Potter says. Beetle pairs offered a choice picked geranium flowers so often that they laid just half as many eggs as pairs provided only with linden leaves. Intoxication is dangerous for the beetle, but is it fun? Potter won't speculate.

Geraniums intoxicate Japanese beetles.

I'll be shopping for White Geraniums.

~Faith

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