Seedlings!

Look at all the tiny, beautiful lettuce, kale, turnip, and collard seedlings!  With all the rain we have been having, the replanted fall garden practically jumped out of the ground.  I had trouble finding replacement lettuce seeds locally, so just planted the one lettuce mix packet that I was able to find.  I did leave part of the bed empty so that I can put in some butterhead type lettuce if I can find it.

Mixed in you see some arugula plants that I purchased and the one remaining basil.  That basil plant is putting out a pretty good effort for this late in the season and surviving the hurricane with nothing but a couple of bare stalks intact.

Although I don't have a good picture yet, I can't help but laugh when I see the broccoli bed.  You may recall that it was planted a few weeks before the hurricane, and that all the plants were eaten down to tiny green nubs by the hens that free ranged for two weeks after the storm.  Well, every broccoli plant has started putting on new leaves!  Somehow the hens missed a growing point on each of those stems, and the plants drew from their established root systems and are giving it another try.  I don't have the heart to replace them now!

Who has seen the wind?

We slipped out on a long planned vacation one day early, just as hurricane Irene pushed towards our house.  There was nothing we could do to stop her!  We came home two weeks later to find our house unscathed, but the gardens, trees and dock were not so lucky.  I loved that the cayenne pepper plant stood it's ground, and even held onto its pods!  I bet these special peppers will bring a little something special to future meals.  If you look very closely you will see the basil plant beside the pepper:  stalks only left behind, but new little green leaves already forming.

The end of the dock is gone, washed away down the marsh into a neighbor's wetlands.  We hope to salvage at least some of it for the rebuild.  One plank was left behind, you can see it at the end of the dock on the left.  It holds a cleat, where our crab pot was, and apparently still is, tied.  Like the peppers, a little something that just held on.

The next two photos show one of the four huge, beautiful cedars that were completely uprooted in the marsh, and the framework around one of the vegetable gardens, now twisted and broken.  I wanted to adjust that bed's support frames anyway, now we certainly will.  The cedars will be missed.  I hope some new young ones sprout soon to replace them.  Almost every shrub/bush in the marsh was destroyed as well, so we will see if nature replaces them with grasses or new shrubs. 

In addition, we lost two myrtle trees, one that provided the main wind break for my vegetable gardens, and one that provided full privacy for our screened porch. We lost one big pine, and our next door neighbor lost 4 big pines.  I still am a little shocked each time I look out a window, as my views have completely changed.  I loved these trees and the shade and wind protection they provided.  But, on the whole, we got off very, very easy. 

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the chickens!  We left them huge tubs of water and big tubes of feed, and had two different friends who stopped by now and then to throw them some corn as well.  The were out and about, free ranging for two weeks.  Well, they are fine!  Fat and happy and laying like crazy.  I did have to throw away about 15 eggs that were in one of the nests, as one thin egg on top of the pile had cracked, oozed through them all, and spoiled. That was a fun clean up!  I don't know if the ladies had to fight off hawks and raccoons and foxes, and are heroines, or if they had a lazy, relaxing vacation.  They aren't talking.

Good Night . . . Irene!

No time for photos today, as hurricane Irene now has her sights set directly on our little island.   Right now they are calling for 7 inches of rain at my house, so I imagine the carefully planted and very cute fall vegetable seedlings that poked their heads out this week will be beaten down to nothing.  And if they aren't destroyed by the rain, the hens - that will be left to free range if everyone leaves for the duration of the storm-will surely eat every single seedling.  (The last thing I want to do is lock the hens in a coop, not knowing when someone might be able to get back to give them food and water.  We will make sure the doors are tied open so they can get inside their protected area, will fill two huge food tubes with food, and will fill every bucket we have with water.  The water will be placed in protected areas around the yard and in the coop.  There will be plenty of bugs around too, so the hens should be fine.)

To prepare the beehives we installed imirie shims, a little square frame on each hive that gives the bees an opening where they can come and go from the TOP section of their home.  They need that extra entrance/exit because it is quite likely the main hive opening will be underwater as the tide surges.  In addition, each hive has three flat cinder blocks stacked on top to help hold it down and keep it from blowing apart.

So, the hens are taken care of as best we can, the bees as well.  Nothing to do for the gardens, we will just replant the fall garden after the storm.  For those of you on the Carolina coast, I wish you well.  There is still lots of time for the storm to change course, so we will see.  I'll let you know how things turn out.