It's been a busy couple of weeks!
First, my tomatoes that I've been babying are now up to the gutters (!) on my house (they are draping over my 6-ft tall fence where they have overgrown the cages) and are covered in (still green) tomatoes, but I think I may see a faint blush of red on one of the first ones that formed. Soon! Last night's storm was enough to blow them all over, despite the supports, but they seem to be doing OK this morning...I propped them all back up, and time will tell. I have a Jet Star, an Early Girl, and a Big Boy by the house, and two more Big Boys growing out by the defunct deck. My peppers and celery are doing well, after recovering from the onslaught of the little red and black bugs this spring, so I'm looking forward to a nice harvest of those here in the next few weeks.
My black raspberries have finally played out ~ I gathered the last few on Saturday, and have been risking life and limb clearing out the old, fruited canes and leaving this year's new canes for next year's crop. There are a lot of older canes still in the mess that were never cleared out from previous years, so I'm dealing with lots of sharp, pokey brambles. It's an easy job to find them all, because the black raspberries don't send up suckers, the new canes just come up from the crown each year. But I've lost some blood, and have come eyeball to eyeball with more spiders than I care to.
I do have one actual blackberry patch at the other end of the yard, and they're just starting to color up now. They are under the black mulberry tree that overhangs our yard in the back, so it's an interesting effect seeing the dark purple fruits on the tree and on the bramble below it. I know I'm going to have to keep the blackberries in check, or they'll overtake everything ~ they're already sending suckers up into the grass where I mow. But the two ripe fruits I just pulled off were yummy, and the bramble is absolutely loaded, so I'm hoping to get enough to make some jam out of them, too. They are so much larger than my raspberries, so I don't think it will take nearly as many to get the requisite 5 cups.
And the grapes are all over the mess that has grown up, but I'm not sure how I'm going to get the ones that are about 12 feet off the ground. And of course, that's where most of the grapes are located....
Indoors, the children have discovered that when you play with bubbles indoors you can make the floor really slippery and then slide things across it (including yourself and mommy, who didn't expect a soapy floor). Other fun things to do are finger paint with melted ice cream on the wall, pour the water out of the bathtub, and practice pouring juice from one cup into another ~ on the living room carpet, of course. So we've done plenty of Bounty hunting indoors, too ~ of the paper towel variety.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
New Trends
Our son, A, has been benefiting from the brushing technique; he is not hand flapping, spinning, or running back and forth nearly as often (although it does still occur), and is able to focus better on the task at hand. He even takes the brush and tries to do it to himself!
Another trend, not so desirable, is A's tendency to play with himself. He will shove his hands down his pants no matter where we are and just go at it. We were in the grocery store after one of his appointments on Tuesday, and I was in the process of paying the cashier when I looked over and noticed that A had slid in between the end of the check-out conveyor belt and a large stand of fabric grocery bags and he had both hands down the front of his shorts. He was watching me out of the corner of his eye, so when I made eye contact he stopped. Then he tried to slide between the movie rental and one of those claw games where you can "catch" a stuffed toy, and he started to do it again. The frustrating part is, he knows he's not supposed to do things like that in public. He knows. He keeps an eye out for when I notice and will stop every time, most often without my having to say anything. I ignored the distasteful looks of the other patrons, dragged him out to the car, and we went on with our lives.
I know it is somewhat typical for boys to discover their, ahem, toys, but most kids don't have the compulsory issues that A deals with. And it's a compulsion.
Initially, I was like, fine, he's a boy, whatever. If he wants to do that in the bathtub or in his bedroom when he gets up in the morning, whatever. I am regretting that decision, as he does not understand the concept of "appropriate", nor does he understand that he is rubbing himself raw and going to injure himself. It has become one of his favorite stims. He plays with himself whenever the mood strikes (which is multiple times a day). He will even stand in front of our huge picture window that faces the highway with his hands down his pants, working. He would mess around down there 24/7 if he could. (Actually, that may be more typical than I'd like to admit!)
Another more infrequent problem is fecal smearing. He had not engaged in that activity for a couple of years, but that all changed this weekend. A had deposited an exceptionally nasty bowel movement in his pants, but rather than let us know, he hid from us. While we were in the kitchen and mudroom areas, he was in the living room decorating the recliner, the couch, the picture window, the windowsill, the television, the carpet. Ordinarily, I'll let him do what he wants for an hour or so; he had just gotten up from a nap and was clean. He is generally very well behaved, and doesn't destroy anything but paper products (which he ingests), although he does love to empty the soap dispenser in the bathroom. Leaving him to his own devices, alas, was not the choice we should have made in this instance.
Thank God for slipcovers and antibacterial cleaners.
Another trend, not so desirable, is A's tendency to play with himself. He will shove his hands down his pants no matter where we are and just go at it. We were in the grocery store after one of his appointments on Tuesday, and I was in the process of paying the cashier when I looked over and noticed that A had slid in between the end of the check-out conveyor belt and a large stand of fabric grocery bags and he had both hands down the front of his shorts. He was watching me out of the corner of his eye, so when I made eye contact he stopped. Then he tried to slide between the movie rental and one of those claw games where you can "catch" a stuffed toy, and he started to do it again. The frustrating part is, he knows he's not supposed to do things like that in public. He knows. He keeps an eye out for when I notice and will stop every time, most often without my having to say anything. I ignored the distasteful looks of the other patrons, dragged him out to the car, and we went on with our lives.
I know it is somewhat typical for boys to discover their, ahem, toys, but most kids don't have the compulsory issues that A deals with. And it's a compulsion.
Initially, I was like, fine, he's a boy, whatever. If he wants to do that in the bathtub or in his bedroom when he gets up in the morning, whatever. I am regretting that decision, as he does not understand the concept of "appropriate", nor does he understand that he is rubbing himself raw and going to injure himself. It has become one of his favorite stims. He plays with himself whenever the mood strikes (which is multiple times a day). He will even stand in front of our huge picture window that faces the highway with his hands down his pants, working. He would mess around down there 24/7 if he could. (Actually, that may be more typical than I'd like to admit!)
Another more infrequent problem is fecal smearing. He had not engaged in that activity for a couple of years, but that all changed this weekend. A had deposited an exceptionally nasty bowel movement in his pants, but rather than let us know, he hid from us. While we were in the kitchen and mudroom areas, he was in the living room decorating the recliner, the couch, the picture window, the windowsill, the television, the carpet. Ordinarily, I'll let him do what he wants for an hour or so; he had just gotten up from a nap and was clean. He is generally very well behaved, and doesn't destroy anything but paper products (which he ingests), although he does love to empty the soap dispenser in the bathroom. Leaving him to his own devices, alas, was not the choice we should have made in this instance.
Thank God for slipcovers and antibacterial cleaners.
Even Better!
I was out picking more of my blackberries today, and noted that they didn't look like normal blackberries. The leaves were different, although there is quite the prolific amount of thorns, arching canes, etc. The fruit actually looks like raspberries, but they are the wrong color. Everyone I know here in Maryland calls them blackberries, though, so I assumed that's what they were. I figured it was just a local wild variant.
I decided to look up blackberries on the internet, because although these were growing wild, they are forming a mass of arched thorny branches down the length of my wooded area and I want to keep that moderately cleared out to keep snakes, mice, and other pests down as much as possible. I have huge loops between plants, where apparently the arches landed on the ground and started forming more plants. I also wanted to see if I needed to do anything to help the plants set fruit better, by pruning. (I know very little about growing fruit, but nearly every fruit I hear about has to be pruned at some point to increase fruit set so I figured it was the case with these, too, even though they're "wild").
The berries and plants I kept finding on the blackberry sites weren't matching what I have, though, until I stumbled on a site that encouraged people to Grow Native!, and saw what looks like my plants: I have black raspberries! The black raspberries are native to North America, while the red ones are from Europe and Asia. There are apparently two different types, one western and one eastern variety. The black raspberries fell from popularity in the U.S. because the red ones were considered a luxury (shipped in from Europe) and that's what everyone started growing for themselves. There are still some black raspberries that are commercially grown, but it is primarily the western variety in the Pacific Northwest. And they are expensive. Who knew?
The fruit and fruit set of my bramble is identical to the pictures I found on the site, down to the separation of the fruit from the plant, leaving a little hollow in the middle. The fruits are also not overly shiny, and have the tiny hairs I have seen on the red raspberries. Real blackberries, on the other hand, do not leave a hollow in the middle when you pick them and break off flush with the top of the berry; they also tend to be larger and more shiny than black raspberries.
Black raspberry fruit set:
My plant:
Black raspberry fruit:
My fruit:
Blackberry:
The pictures I found of the leaves (with whitish undersides) and the canes (greyish/whitish green) match in color, size, and leaf type to my plants, too. Blackberry leaves are also have much sharper ridges along the leaf veins, whereas black raspberry leaves have a sawed edge but smoother leaves. I checked a few other sites, and sure enough ~ that's what I've got.
Black raspberry leaves:
My plant:
Curiously, though, these do not get a whole lot of sun but seem to be thriving nonetheless. Each website I checked about growing black raspberries suggests putting them in partial to full sun, depending on how hot the summers are. Mine get a couple of hours in the morning, and then get about an hour in the evening, that's it. Maybe if I pulled one of the plants out and planted it in the sun, it would produce more fruit? Hmmm. An experiment for next year...
Anyway: Fabulous! I now know what I have back there, and how to care for it. I'm supposed to clear out the canes that bore fruit this year and leave the others. Raspberries bear fruit on the previous year's vegetative non-fruiting canes. Black raspberries are also not overly invasive, they only produce canes from their crown, so suckering off the roots isn't a problem. Whereever a cane arches over and touches the ground, though, it will root and form a new plant ~ which I'd noted when I was scrambling around through there getting scratched up this morning. If I want to thin it out, I can, realizing that the more canes I get rid of the less fruit I'll have next year.
I have a lot of pruning work to do this fall and winter, between the raspberry brambles and the still-unknown species of grapevine that has run amok over its trellis. I'm just letting it grow, there are a lot of grapes on it. I do know that it is not a wild grape variety. Whatever it is, it was deliberately planted and properly trained at one point, I can see where the single trunk was selected and it was trained laterally over the framework. I have no idea if the previous owners ever pruned that thing or not, but it is at least 10 feet tall, about twice as wide, and is reaching for some of my trees. I discovered what it was too late in the spring to prune it; if I'd tried it at that time, it would have "bled" (run sap) for a long time and possibly invite diseases in. So, I am waiting until fall to find out what they are ~ whether they are "table grapes" or "wine grapes". Because of the vigorous undergrowth of a couple of very large honeysuckles shrubs (trees!), I don't know if the grapes will get the sunlight needed to ripen or not, but we'll see.
The blob o' foilage:
(Unripe)Grapes:
In the meantime, I'll just keep on picking my black raspberries every few days or so as they continue to ripen. I have now picked enough to fill one of those plastic 1-lb strawberry containers, with more berries freezing on a cookie sheet. There's lots more out there, so I might actually get enough to make jam out of them! (It takes 5 cups of smashed berries to make jam). This is such an unexpected blessing! I had wanted to plant some raspberries in my garden anyway; I guess God knew that and had them waiting for me here at our new house! I may still plant some red raspberries, but I know I have to keep them far away from the black ones. For one thing, they'll cross-pollinate (with sometimes not nice results), and for seconds, apparently black raspberries can carry all sorts of viruses that will get into the red ones, the red ones being less able to fend off the diseases.
I decided to look up blackberries on the internet, because although these were growing wild, they are forming a mass of arched thorny branches down the length of my wooded area and I want to keep that moderately cleared out to keep snakes, mice, and other pests down as much as possible. I have huge loops between plants, where apparently the arches landed on the ground and started forming more plants. I also wanted to see if I needed to do anything to help the plants set fruit better, by pruning. (I know very little about growing fruit, but nearly every fruit I hear about has to be pruned at some point to increase fruit set so I figured it was the case with these, too, even though they're "wild").
The berries and plants I kept finding on the blackberry sites weren't matching what I have, though, until I stumbled on a site that encouraged people to Grow Native!, and saw what looks like my plants: I have black raspberries! The black raspberries are native to North America, while the red ones are from Europe and Asia. There are apparently two different types, one western and one eastern variety. The black raspberries fell from popularity in the U.S. because the red ones were considered a luxury (shipped in from Europe) and that's what everyone started growing for themselves. There are still some black raspberries that are commercially grown, but it is primarily the western variety in the Pacific Northwest. And they are expensive. Who knew?
The fruit and fruit set of my bramble is identical to the pictures I found on the site, down to the separation of the fruit from the plant, leaving a little hollow in the middle. The fruits are also not overly shiny, and have the tiny hairs I have seen on the red raspberries. Real blackberries, on the other hand, do not leave a hollow in the middle when you pick them and break off flush with the top of the berry; they also tend to be larger and more shiny than black raspberries.
Black raspberry fruit set:
My plant:
Black raspberry fruit:
My fruit:
Blackberry:
The pictures I found of the leaves (with whitish undersides) and the canes (greyish/whitish green) match in color, size, and leaf type to my plants, too. Blackberry leaves are also have much sharper ridges along the leaf veins, whereas black raspberry leaves have a sawed edge but smoother leaves. I checked a few other sites, and sure enough ~ that's what I've got.
Black raspberry leaves:
My plant:
Curiously, though, these do not get a whole lot of sun but seem to be thriving nonetheless. Each website I checked about growing black raspberries suggests putting them in partial to full sun, depending on how hot the summers are. Mine get a couple of hours in the morning, and then get about an hour in the evening, that's it. Maybe if I pulled one of the plants out and planted it in the sun, it would produce more fruit? Hmmm. An experiment for next year...
Anyway: Fabulous! I now know what I have back there, and how to care for it. I'm supposed to clear out the canes that bore fruit this year and leave the others. Raspberries bear fruit on the previous year's vegetative non-fruiting canes. Black raspberries are also not overly invasive, they only produce canes from their crown, so suckering off the roots isn't a problem. Whereever a cane arches over and touches the ground, though, it will root and form a new plant ~ which I'd noted when I was scrambling around through there getting scratched up this morning. If I want to thin it out, I can, realizing that the more canes I get rid of the less fruit I'll have next year.
I have a lot of pruning work to do this fall and winter, between the raspberry brambles and the still-unknown species of grapevine that has run amok over its trellis. I'm just letting it grow, there are a lot of grapes on it. I do know that it is not a wild grape variety. Whatever it is, it was deliberately planted and properly trained at one point, I can see where the single trunk was selected and it was trained laterally over the framework. I have no idea if the previous owners ever pruned that thing or not, but it is at least 10 feet tall, about twice as wide, and is reaching for some of my trees. I discovered what it was too late in the spring to prune it; if I'd tried it at that time, it would have "bled" (run sap) for a long time and possibly invite diseases in. So, I am waiting until fall to find out what they are ~ whether they are "table grapes" or "wine grapes". Because of the vigorous undergrowth of a couple of very large honeysuckles shrubs (trees!), I don't know if the grapes will get the sunlight needed to ripen or not, but we'll see.
The blob o' foilage:
(Unripe)Grapes:
In the meantime, I'll just keep on picking my black raspberries every few days or so as they continue to ripen. I have now picked enough to fill one of those plastic 1-lb strawberry containers, with more berries freezing on a cookie sheet. There's lots more out there, so I might actually get enough to make jam out of them! (It takes 5 cups of smashed berries to make jam). This is such an unexpected blessing! I had wanted to plant some raspberries in my garden anyway; I guess God knew that and had them waiting for me here at our new house! I may still plant some red raspberries, but I know I have to keep them far away from the black ones. For one thing, they'll cross-pollinate (with sometimes not nice results), and for seconds, apparently black raspberries can carry all sorts of viruses that will get into the red ones, the red ones being less able to fend off the diseases.
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