October 4, 2026
On September 20, most of the scorched plants had recovered. Some had been scorched to death. I lost more of my Alpine strawberries, sorrel, and my Longhorn pepper plant.
I caught up on laundry and Bruce went out to mow.
On September 21, Bruce continued with his mowing mission.
I looked through my seeds to determine what I wanted to plant for my fall vegetable garden.
I picked a basket of peppers. These are the Longhorn peppers from the dying plant, with some Thai peppers tossed in.
The sunset was lovely.
The reflected sunlight from the sunset in the east was a pretty pink and purple.
The sunset was a lovely orange, white, and dark streaks.
On September 22, we did yard and garden cleanup. I weeded the vegetable garden beds, found fire ants in one of the beds, and spent some time jumping around, brushing the fire ants off, and cursing. I was lucky and got most of the fire ants off before getting bitten (stung). I resumed weeding and discovered another fire ant nest with my sight, so I didn’t put my hands near it.
Bruce clipped plants along the fence with branches or vines sticking out into the yard. This makes it a lot easier to mow.
In the evening, we inspected the orchard.
We saw the sunset as we walked back to the house.
On September 23, Bruce got to play with his tractor. He moved the Bama Dirt Pro Mix into beds whose dirt levels had sunk. This was some tight maneuvering with the tractor. I was impressed, even though he dented the bottom of one of the short beds. No biggie.
With the Bama Dirt Pro Mix in the beds, I had more space to plant.
We removed the black plastic bags from the former potato bed. The large rocks holding down the bags were placed in the tractor’s bucket.
With the tractor, Bruce easily moved the rocks to a spot in the back field. The tractor rocks!
On September 24, with the cool weather, the tadpoles are not just coming up to the surface in the morning and evening. They are at the surface during the daytime as well.
I found mushrooms growing in the asparagus bed.
In this picture, to the left, you can see one of the beds Bruce added Bama Dirt Pro Mix to. At the bottom of the picture, you can see the bed that had been covered with black garbage bags.
In the front flower garden, I saw a variegated fritillary butterfly landing on a violet. Their caterpillars eat violets.
The next post picks up from here.
Lots of information! I love the colors of the first photo! Clouded Skipper is a pretty plant. Do you drive the tractor also? We owned about 14 acres in the Catskills when I was growing up but it was mostly woods. We had lots of hunters nearby. We also had cows, horses, and a bull. I guess that was our lawn mower.
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The butterfly is the Clouded Skipper and the plant is a verbena. The verbena is about 3 to 4 feet wide and about 2 feet tall. It would grow well in Florida, if you have space for such a big plant.
I have not driven the tractor yet. I do plan to try it out on the grassy knoll. We want to level the grassy knoll. The grassy knoll seems like a great place to get some experience.
My parents owned 180 acres when I was growing up on their dairy farm. My dad bought additional land not connected to the 180 acres. We had 120 cows we milked, chickens sometimes, a mule at one point, and a horse for a while.
We had hunters asking Dad if they could hunt or fish. Sometimes a hunter would mistake a cow for a deer. This upset my dad, but at least most of the hunters who killed a cow by mistake, would pay for the cow. If they didn’t, my dad made their name mud.
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