08/13/12

I overslept this morning. You may have noticed, that's a problem for me. I blame oversleeping this morning on being out late Saturday and getting my schedule messed up. That's probably nothing more than an excuse, though. Since I overslept i didn't have time to go outside and do anything before starting work. 

The weather forecast was calling for rain, so I decided that I should at least try to get something done at lunch time, since I didn't expect to be able to do anything after work. I wanted to get the debris from the broken limb moved, so I worked on that at lunch. As you might recall if you've been following the blog, the last time I piled up limbs with leaves in my pile of stuff to shred I ended up with ants making a nest in the pile. I decided to remove all of the leaves, to prevent this from happening again. At the same time, I gathered the nuts that had fallen with the limb or were still attached to the limbs. I don't expect that the nuts are ripe, but Andrea wants the outer hull to use for a fungicide recipe she recently ran across. 

Since I had so many leaves, I decided to take a chance and add them to the compost. Many people avoid adding black walnut leaves to their compost because they contain juglone, which is toxic to many plants. The research I did, however, indicates that after several weeks the leaves would be sufficiently broken down that the juglone would no longer present a problem. Since I don't intend to use any of the compost for at least 2 months, I thought it was worth the risk. I'm not going to suggest that anyone else do the same, but I'll report back if I see any problems from including the black walnut leaves.

While I was working today, Andrea was working in the kitchen. She made two batches of pesto, using the basil that she harvested yesterday. She also cut up some serrano and habanero peppers to try a different approach at drying those. 

The rain that was being forecast ended up breaking up before getting to us, so it was a nice vening. After dinner I went back out and finished removing the leaves from the limbs and added those to the compost as well. The compost bin is overflowing with leaves right now. I really need to build a bigger bin. I think we are going to try going to town and maybe London one day in search of some.