Gardens-In-The-Sand

It's autumn...

Scattered frost this morning... Had ghost pepper seedlings just coming up in a pot got frost burnt...

And still, sun came out, temp improved and the butterflies came out in force!

Gulf fritillary showing off it's ultra-violet spots as it nectars at hot lips salvia...

Another frit...

Zebra longwings...

Another one...

Cloudless sulfur

American holly

Check all those berries at the top!

American lady.... kinda looks like it's been around for it's life expectancy...

Flowers on camellia sasanqua.

Blue stem

Jewels of Opar

Mother hen and biddy

And... Some autumn colour on a maple!

Labels: berries, butterflies, camellia

Watermelons

Not happening...

Hard to pick watermelons when the cats are eating them before they ripen...

And then the deer eat all the leaves off the vines...

Kinda surprising that I'm still having trouble (with deer), considering the amount of work I've put into fencing...

Labels: watermelons

Tree fruit

Pawpaws have dropped!

After they've dropped, they can be eaten... I prefer to peel first, but it isn't really necessary....

Or is it? I've read that the peel & seed contains toxins... I've also read that toxicity may be mostly myth.

Persimmons!

Pears...

I've been picking and eating for a couple weeks... they're getting ripe enough to enjoy.

Labels: pawpaw, pears, persimmon

Still dealing with the deer fence...

This is actually an easier fix than all the fencing I've been doing over the last 2 months, where I'm just adding more wire above existing, and when they jump in, are apparently clearing existing 6 foot wire with no trouble...

Not being able to tell where they come in is a difficult fix... so much wire to add more to...

No problem...

Hog wire added above existing welded wire... Let's see them try to get through that!

Labels: fence

Dwarf Pawpaw & Gopher Tortoise

Mature dwarf paw paw 'tree'... Height waist high to chest high.

Loaded with fruit this year... But tiny!

They're starting to drop... I pick them up and eat... plant seeds in pots. I tried planting seeds in flower garden a number of years ago when I got a few fruit... Unfortunately none came up...

I may need to try scarification.

Fruit on regular tree is still hard...

So bizarre watching gopher tortoise eating cnidoscolus... Aka "7 minute itch". I wouldn't want to try it...

Just brushing against cnidoscolus stimulosus feels like getting attacked by fire ants... and if unlucky enough to scratch irritated skin, may continue to scratch for the rest of the day!

Imagine getting a mouthful of that! But I see the tortoises browsing the plant every summer!

Actually, I may have some idea of how a mouthful of cnidoscolus might feel...

I had a mouthful of fire ants yesterday... Pretty funny, grabbed a handful of potato chips from the bottom of bag, popped in mouth without examining... Had to pick fire ants off my tongue using mirror!

Labels: gopher tortoise, pawpaw

Hot and dry

The rains stopped... the weather turned hot...

Not a surprise, the rains this spring were the unusual weather...

With the end of the rain, and the near constant heat, came the fun of portaging water from the rain barrels and attempting to keep a few plants going...

And... the deer fence started getting tested as the desperate critters wanted something to eat that wasn't crunchy...

Pear tree...

Pepper plant...

Maxixe vine

A few of the plants being consumed by mother deer...

Incidentally.... I saw the spotted fawn she stashed in the woodland, inside the deer fence...

Feels kind of bad needing to fence them out... But, I have the fence to protect a little bit of my efforts...

Mulberry stump

Mulberry posts...

The birds planted a lot of mulberry trees everywhere I put in gardens... So plenty of post materials...

Cut down a mulberry tree, and it grows right back, so I get multiple posts from the same tree.

There were a number of areas where the weight of the vines (muscadine, Carolina jessamine, smilax) made the fence vulnerable...

so... cut the vines off the fence... add new taller posts, additional fencing above the original... Tie the two fences together with some twine...and cross fingers.

Here's some pics from before everything turned crunchy...