Life in the Thalweg 5.15.08

Somewhere along the way I’ve managed to get into poison ivy. My arm is slightly swollen with one nasty looking rash painted a flaking chalky pink. Lovely. I also twisted my wrist funny while biking along the river yesterday so I’ve got this nappy wrist wrap on, too.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be filming some of the Wetland Learner activities as well as being photographed myself for a feature in the Lawrence Magazine later this summer. I think I’ll wear long sleeves.

I have to say that the poison ivy at the river seems to be thriving while the tomatoes I cleverly planted before July this year seem to be getting paler by the day. The trials of gardening in Kansas.

In today’s Dragonfly Messenger I reported on the availability of a number of historic publications through KSU’s Research & Extension. I took a lull in the afternoon to flip through Walter Balch’s 1937 bulletin on Home Vegetable Gardens. He included a horse-drawn-cultivator-friendly layout for the average 1/2 acre Kansas home garden, encouraged the autumn application of well rotted manure, and discouraged the use of imported seedlings suggesting it would be better to focus on overall production quality than force early production. My tomatoes are looking even paler now!