On Tuesday morning I was up at 6:30AM after only 4 hours sleep. I got the sprinklers going and worked on my post. We’ve had no rain for a couple weeks now so I had to water the veg gardens and the New Herb garden.
We are not in a drought as of July 1 but I’m having to water.
I needed to get laundry done so I worked on getting it started. My helper friend arrived at 9:30AM and got a couple chores done and an errand. Then we set to work making pectin.
I had collected the downed green apples and he went out and harvested the green quince in the Big garden. We cut them up, removing the bugs, etc and followed this recipe:
But I forgot to check and stir and it didn’t come out right. Then when I went to strain it I meant to use cheesecloth and actually used buttercloth. So not as much drained as it should have.
I left it overnight and didn’t get much pectin.
When my helper friend took the trimmings out to the compost he found this wasp on the tobacco netting hanging up.
He looked it up and according to Wikipedia:
“Tremex columba, also known as the pigeon tremex or pigeon horntail, is a species of horntail that is native to eastern and western North America.
Because the species prefers dead or decaying trees, they usually pose little threat to vegetation as a pest though they do sometimes select healthy trees, and via the ovipositor the species can infect the host tree with Cerrena unicolor, a fungus that can rot the trees.
The species is not considered harmful to humans, and does not sting or bite.”
While the apples were cooking, we got the seedling shelf shifted to the north side of the back porch.
By the time he left, I was ready for a nap but didn’t get one as my son had people here and they kept me awake.
I started the sprinklers again at 6PM and finished the gardens. I went to bed around 9:30PM but couldn’t get to sleep until 11PM. I am finally off all meds, so hopefully my sleep will revert to what it was.
On Wednesday I hope to get out to the big garden and finally finish the cleanout. I need to check the green beans and harvest if there are any. My general helper is coming at 7AM so I hope we can get a lot done. I need to get the pea fences cleaned up and put away. And I need to do something about the pectin.