Boise Surrounded by Fires

Last Tuesday, the Idaho Statesman predicted a breeze coming in Wednesday that would blow away some of this smoke. They hoped for a northwest wind, since that was the only direction that did not have fires. Hours later, there were fires in the northwest. I guess it was not just Idaho fires that caused all the smoke in Boise, it was smoke blowing in from Nevada, Northern California, and Oregon. Here is a good firemap,

http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/wildlandfire/latest-news-map.html

Boise is surrounded. We did get some relief on Wednesday, but it was brief, this morning it smelled like smoke and I could see the smoke in the air at 9 am. They do not expect the fire burning near Stanley/Sun Valley to be out until autumn.

Fortunately, I got the electric bill. All this heat and I felt like the air was running all the time and my electric bill would be huge. It was $35. I forgot how much cheaper electric is here. I am running the air as much as I want for the rest of August, even it went up to $40, it would be worth it to sleep at night. Gas is a bit more, my highest gas (heating) bill was $61, and that is keeping the house no warmer than 68 degrees.

The raspberries were arching to the ground, so I made an attempt to lift them up,

I will need to do better at staking them as they grow next year, since they are now full of nasty thorns and bees.

The blueberry is still going crazy,

This one is sitting next to the sprinkler, and blueberries are waterhogs. The other blueberry looks fine, but is sitting there the same size.

I started harvesting the tomatoes,

These are beefstakes and dark red on the inside. Some of them get cracks in the skin, which do not affect the taste of the tomato. To my relief, I have not seen one tomato worm. One of these on the windowsill has a suspicious hole on top, but I have not cut it open to investigate, yet.

I bought a plant stake/ring for the bush bean. These have big leaves, but not very strong stems, and half of the plant was flopped over. The ring is supposed to be for perennial flowers, but seems to work. It is a metal ring, about 1' in diameter with three stakes that hook on the ring. Here you can see it works, with just a bit of one stake showing,

That is the cucumber creeping in on the left. Removing the broccoli and the cauliflower exposed some carrots I planted that could not grow in their shade, they are now perking up, but I am not sure they will make it before winter. I am going to plant some spinach and some onions in the now empty front space. These are late growing and may extend this year's garden experiment into October.

The landlord finally sent a form for me to renew my lease for another year with now increase. It looks like I am in this place for another year.

Tuesday, August 21st is my two year anniversary, two years living in Boise. I will have to do some kind of review next week.