79F and 85%RH this morning. Forecasts are for part cloud and rain later. We haven’t gotten any rain from the Gulf storm yet. The wind pattern has changed completely and is blowing from north to south because of the storm, but nothing wet so far. Radar shows it all still parked over New Orleans. Talk about ‘sit and spin’…
Today is the monthly meeting for my non-prepping hobby. I’ll be heading out to that soon. It’s nice to get out and share something with a group, and it’s nice to have something unrelated to how I spend much of my free time.
Speaking of preps–
The garden continues. Zukes and cukes are still not dead, but aren’t really thriving either. Vines are developing, and growing a bit, but other folks are getting veg off theirs already.
Tomatoes have packed it in. The roma plant must not be getting watered and is a shriveled stick. I didn’t look at the garden for a few days and that was a few days too many for the tomatoes. The other two plants are still green and growing but no fruit.
Citrus continues as before. The Meyer will have a bumper crop, the orange may have one surviving fruit, no lime, grapefruit, or orange on the other plant.
Apples are developing on the one tree. Two of them. Which is better than most of my trees in the second year. Peach tree is looking better and leafy, but no fruit.
Grape vines got their leaves back after the caterpillar attack, but what grapes there were are long gone.
Blueberries are done. Final yield was maybe a cup and half but youngest daughter loved going out there and picking them every other day. I never saw the plants at the big box store, so didn’t get to replace the dead plant. Bird netting helped a lot. I’ll be picking up more when I see it. It’s not expensive and will help you get your crop for your family, instead of the critters.
Been a while since I talked about ‘stuff’. This week I got machetes for the vehicle kits, a couple more coleman lanterns, a big pot for the propane ring, another 40 gallons of water storage, wheels for my other new storage tank,
It’s time to rebuild some of my first aid kits, especially the two big ones for the house. Tape and adhesive ages out, even if the other stuff can be stretched in time. I’ve been going through battery powered stuff too and changing batteries.
Lots of stuff at the secondary location is aged out too. I’ll be shifting some stores from the house to there, and rotating stuff back here. Some stuff I’ll simply be replacing like the rice and flour. I forgot that I had a dozen square water storage containers over there. I really should refill those.
I need to rotate and expand the gasoline storage too. Hurricane season is here and I haven’t expanded to my seasonal storage comfort zone. The trucks are all full at the moment, and the highway signs are reminding people that there is a big storm in the Gulf and they should fill up on gas. Good advice at any time.
So, what have you done to prep lately? Some folks are doing a nice job of expanding their preparedness, but I always like hearing from everyone….
nick