Some more pictures.

 I'd previously seen the horned devil caterpillar... Neat to see the imperial moth hanging out on a cosmos plant next to the garden path.

I don't often get monarchs... I grow several kinds of milkweed but, when they don't fly in, they don't lay eggs. I saw the mama monarch laying eggs, and then saw 3 of these guys... Now, I need to look for those green chrysalises.

There's two gulf fritillary caterpillars in above picture... Earlier this summer, I had zebra longwing caterpillars on my passiflora

You gotta look close to see the cucumber worm on the stem of my squash flower... really difficult to get any squash with these guys inside all the blooms before they even open!

Good kitty! Something is eating my sweet potatoes and cow pea plants... I don't see rabbits... I suspect the rats.

Zebra longwing. Really mild winter last time... I've had a ton of these all season... most years, they don't even get here till nearly autumn.... I think they were able to winter over... 

licorice goldenrod (Solidago odora)

sand bean (Strophostyles helvola), I tried cooking with it recently... Gotta tell ya, you gotta pick those beans small... Let them get anywhere near their full size and it was like trying to eat bark... So... some were edible... some, not so much.

Oranges on my hardy orange tree.... I've already had some fresh squeezed lemonade... from above fruit.

Another pic of my biddies... I crossed a Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster with some tetra tint hens, and ended up with these gorgeous pullets! Oughta be a breed theirselves!

3 year old ghost pepper plant... Personally, I think these peppers are about as good as I can ask for when cooking... Of course, you may not want to use the entire pepper...

Stay Safe

Sorry that I haven't posted since last Autumn...

Covid-19 hasn't really affected me much, but... with no internet at my house... posting from my truck is tedious.

Some beautiful weather this year at my house... It never got cold enough last winter to put up plastic over my windows... and... this Spring, more warm weather, rain in due season....

Of course... people out in the clay soil... might have felt like they were getting too much of a good thing! .

It's April and the poppies have been pretty as usual...
I didn't plant any last winter, so... They have all been self sowed .

I hatched some eggs....

Patch of Canada columbine... last month...

Nicotina

Here's something I didn't expect to see... rumex with root knot nematodes... I was also finding these beasties on Pokweed... unfortunately, I didn't get a picture...

Rose that I grew from a cutting... 2 years old.

Another rose... also grown from cutting 2 years old.

 I have brown thrashers acting like they are setting up house keeping in the Cherokee rose...

Tiger swallowtail visiting lemon blossoms...

Poppies again....

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.