Before the Freeze

Had beans... they were sweet and succulent, not stringy and tough like when temps were in the hundreds in September and October.... one good freeze, and no more beans...

Hot pepper plants were nearly 6 foot tall, and covered in flowers... no more..

Pepper plants... Tall plants are grown inside tomato cages to prevent sprawl.

Assorted peppers... ghost peppers and carolina reapers.

Spiny cucumbers...

Cat eating spiny cucumber... the chickens also eat them...

Chickens eating lambsquarter (chenopodium) seeds off the stalks.

mirabilis jalapa with bee

Helianthus and monarch.

Evening primrose

Daisy mums and camphorweed

After the freeze... decorative kale planted last december...

Hardy cyclamen

Pear blossoms!

Leaf colour on maple...

Experiment... char soaked with urine...

Dog Days in the Garden

 Cardinal... gonna pick her own corn?

Naw, she's hunting caterpillars!

 These hummingbirds are so sweet....

So cute!

 A monarch! I'm seeing them a number of times this summer...

If the monarchs would only find the milkweed... being enjoyed by the black form tiger swallowtail.

 Picked a 23 pound watermelon this morning for breakfast...

These watermelon are supposed to be new world melons...

In the early 1920s, Art Combe, a Southwestern plant expert and amateur prospector found a small woven pot filled with bright red watermelon seeds in an abandoned sandstone cave in Arizona’s Mogollon Rim. The red seeds are believed to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old!

https://www.rareseeds.com/blog/post/art-combes-amazing-ancient-watermelon

I keep trying to find stuff that will tolerate the conditions out here... There is a bit of difference between drought tolerant and... humidity and drought tolerant...

 Row of bean tepees, and a row of green striped cushaw.

4 squash!

I had a chicken problem... I was finding feathers on the ground, and seeing fewer birds... I think this raccoon was responsible... 

Deerberries

When I cleared paths through the thicket, a lot of deerberry (Vaccinium stamineum) bushes came back.

People walking on my paths... ask me if these are blueberries... same family... but different.

After the berries colour up... I pick and eat by the handsfull...

When I search deerberry, to see what other people say about them... their assessment seems mostly negative... on the order of ... eaten by wildlife... and that's all their worth...

I beg to differ.

when The berries are ripe... very tasty...

But... they don't all ripen at once like blueberries... picking these is like picking mahonia berries... a few ripen at a time... gotta visit a buncha different bushes each day.

It's worth it, though.

Eaten fresh, it's like a burst of taste in your mouth... they're so fruity that it's almost like perfume...

I finally got around to making pancakes... tasted like blueberry pancakes... with an occasional burst of flavour.

Summer in the vegetable garden

Trail of tears beans and Swamp hibiscus (hibiscus coccineus).

Bucket of beans...

Ghost peppers

Freshly mulched veggies...

Jerusalem artichokes in bloom

Decorative Kale

What do you do about those wild and woolly cherry tomato plants... determined to grow through the cage and all over the wheelbarrow path?

Tie/bale them up with baling twine...

Beauty berry caterpillar (Manduca rustica)

Indigo bunting feasting on seeds from the large native grasses.

Hummingbird

ruellia elegans

And finally a selection of pollinators.

Another Spring

Praying mantis hatch...

Spotted the egg cluster last autumn, placed in growing pot where I could keep an eye on it... still coulda missed the hatch... they were there only a few hours... before dispersing.

Snow pea flowers...

Poppy season again!

Nicotiana

Got varmints coming in the garden... 

I'm not even baiting the trap any more... just set it next to the fence where they come in...

Can't catch armadillos with bait anyway...

Biddies...

Cat fud...

Interesting story... I spotted the deer laying on the highway, pulled over... John Law was behind me... he pulled over too... ran his gumballs... I got out... waited to hear from the patrolman... He asked, "Do you want that?", "yeah", "well, grab it then!" I did... and got out of Dodge...

Fricasseed chops...