Great Weather, Gardening, and a new (old) book!

The weather has been great the past few days and it looks to continue for a few more.  Temps have been in the 70-degree range in the afternoon and in the upper 40's at night!!  Fabulous for Southern Indiana.  We'll be begging for days like this come July and August!  But for now, we'll sleep with the windows open and enjoy the weather we're blessed with.

 The past couple of evenings were spent on scrounging expeditions.  You know, good bean poles aren't that easy to find any more.  I prefer sassafras, about an inch to inch and a quarter in diameter at the base.  When found in a fencerow, they are usually tall and as straight---well, as a beanpole!  We found enough of the saplings and once home, I sharpened the base end of each one.  I stuck the beans, four hills at a time, one pole to a hill.  Then I gathered the four poles just above head high and tied them securely together in tipi fashion.  Then on to the next four.  Somewhere in the early plantings, I lost track of a couple of hills of beans that didn't come up and replaced them with tomato plants, so I have fourteen hills of Kentucky Blue pole beans.  Once the poles were all in place, I laid tomato cages on their sides around the perimeter of the plantings to keep the neighborhood cottontail rabbits from nipping the young plants.  Once the plants get going a bit and climbing up the poles, they don't usually bother the older leaves near the base.

I am also adding a shot of our compost bin.  It is another of those do-it-yourself projects that I like.  It is simply made from old, used concrete blocks that are loose stacked.  I stacked them on their sides to allow for more air movement.  Note too, that the holes in the blocks at the front of the bin allow me to place some short poles to help contain the contents of the bin.  All of our vegetable scraps go in the pile as well as old straw, and other trimmings.

Finally, in today's post is a photo of an old book I recently located.  It is titled "Early American History--1492-1789--Political, Social, and Economic"  It was published way back in 1938 and was written by one of my great uncles, Jennings Bryan Sanders.  I never really knew 'Uncle Jennings', as my dad called him, but our family was very proud of him and held him in high regard.  He earned a Ph.D. and was, at one time, president of a college in Tennessee.  I guess you could say he was the scholar in our family.  He wrote several books including a couple about the Continental Congress.  Apparently, I came by my interest in Revolutionary War History naturally.