Challenges and Updates

I have been a little delinquent in posting and it is in part because when the days are warm, the room with the computer is very uncomfortable an we have been having a lot of those days.

A few things to catch up on:

I guess it started with a call to show off your sunflowers by mama pea.  I love my sunflowers but mainly because of the story behind them. When we first moved in and we landscaped to put the veg garden in, I took my daughter seed shopping with me. I asked her to pick something she wanted to plant. I thought she would pick peas or beans, even broccoli but instead she picked sunflowers. I cringed at the idea of giving up precious space in my veg garden for these tall monster flowers. I planted them at the edge of the garden by the garage and have to admit they were beautiful and a wonderful addition to the garden the first year. They have returned every year and now have filled in the "dead" spot between the garden and the garage. I am forever grateful to my daughter for asking me to buy those seeds.
The show:

The second picture is a flower that is 10' high by the garage. The two on the right are from a dwarf sunflower 4' high with 10" diameter bloom.

Then came the refrigerator challenge that was put out by Erin followed by Granny. Forget it! It is not going to happen. I pride myself in keeping the garden up not the refrigerator. I had no idea that people connected the two.

Somehow, a swallowtail butterfly managed to escape my search and look at her. She was not far from going off to make her cocoon when i shot this two days ago. This morning I can't find her anywhere.

Some of my other eggplants are beginning to produce. I am excited for a new vegetable.

Listing for my own future reference, the harvests have been as follows:
Lots of tomatoes, I will pick most of the Romas this weekend for canning.
Cucumbers but not as many as I would like, I planted a variety that cannot be pickled so I guess that is good.
Peppers not coming in as they should. A burst of chills in the early season but very few now. Bells may be starting, plus a few Anaheims.
Kale, swiss chard slowing down in the heat.
Eggplant, ichiban have stalled but some fruit coming up on new plants.
Okra beginning to produce regularly
Squash slowed down in the last two weeks but may start up again.

They're Gone

My afternoon stroll in the garden lead to the discovery of three missing caterpillars. Like the last set, I believe the birds got these guys too.
Oh well, I will have to wait for the next butterfly to come by. Still a chance that I may have missed their presence but in reality, it is still a little early.

The Next Phase

The earlier pictures I took of swallow tail butterfly eggs proved not to get to far. The birds usually pick them off in the earlier part of the season. I have been watching closely and the last set of eggs has made it to the next stage. Picture on the left is from June 9 and the picture on the right is from today. The difference is the color and the pronounced white stripe. In a few days we should see the orange dots that run down it's back. And yes, these are the same three fellows.
Click on the picture to see them a little larger.

Butterflies, Radishes, Peppers and So Much More

I have begun to track the life of a swallow tail butterfly on my fennel plants.
On May 21st a swallow tail laid eggs on one of my fennel plants. Experience from last year tells me that these eggs will not make it because it is too early in the season. None the less I will continue to track it for everyone to see. The picture on the left was taken right after I witnessed the eggs being laid on May 21. On the right is the first Instar caterpillar stage. The egg hatched in the last 24 hours. Egg stage was 5 days.

I have been so curious about the radishes that I had to take a closer look and low and behold!… I must confess, my daughter was excited and talked me into pulling 4 of them out. I don't think that she really ever had a radish. Daughter and husband had one and I had two. i must say, they tasted really good and I am not really fond of raw radishes. We will pull some more out when my father comes to visit this weekend.

I have found the first official fruit on one of my pepper plants. This is one of the few plants that I did not start from seed. It is a padron pepper. On the other hand, someone has been eating my Anaheim pepper. Who could this be???