Rain, Rodents and Broadband
Finally after a solid month, the rain has ceased and we have had a full day of sunshine. I'm sure that most of you have shared the weather from an extremely wet spring. This of course has paid a toll on our seed starts this year as the green house was under a constant cloud, and not much light entered through the three year old plastic. Although it has held up wonderful from the snow, hail and freezing rain of the earlier part of the year. The plants were of course of a poor quality. And to throw a little more insult - the rodents have entered my plant domain. All, and I mean all of my eggplants are nothing but short stems and even some of the tomatoes are eaten to the dirt level in the pots. Nothing to do but replant and coax the poorer plants back in the garden.
All of our garden planting, which is normally the week of May 15th, finally just entered the ground yesterday, May 22nd. The soil tilled and fertilized with a little blood and bone meal. So we shall see just what will occur. The asparagus, three-year-old roots in our ground, has been very productive for us. We have eaten quite a bit and have even managed to put some up for thanksgiving just in case we do not receive a fall flush. Now the stalks are high and feeding those precious roots. The strawberries have been fairly productive, but not what I had expected due to the rain. But for a composted bed that we started two years ago I am not complaining.
Last but not least we have finally entered into the broadband era here on the mountain. No the phone company still said we were too far out for their DSL. We have a new yard ornament in the form of a Wild Blue satellite dish. So far, so good. We spent the better part of two days configuring our own network for the house as they only connect one computer, and not to mention surfing and updating all of our software. What a difference between 3 Kbs and 60 Kbs for downloads. The cost for installation was in the area of $300 by the time all was said and done, and the monthly bill will run around $61. So all in all not bad. We both grew tired of bad connections, and when we called the phone company about the ultra low speed it was always "our fault". Of course when we called to cancel the Internet phone service they could have cared less, but Kat did squeeze in that we installed the dish.
Hope you are all drying out and keep an eye on us as more is still too come.
From the mountain
Kevin & Kat
