Wordless Wednesday

Garden Happenings

I love this time of the garden when you can see growth day to day. The forever changing perennial garden. The air was so thick this morning with fog that you could see all these interesting webs on many of the plants.

Bean flowers are plentiful. Much different than last year when we had such a hard time getting the beans producing and when they did in August, it was a poor crop. This year I should be getting them in another week or two.

Peas are beginning to plump up.

The big news is that two female butternut squash flowers opened with no males in sight. I clipped one of the male pattypan squash flowers to pollinate the butternut. I hope it works. An unfolded squash flower.

My Daughter's Garden Salad

I had a harvest Tuesday that was almost better than the total of all last week. I collected another bowl of beans and a good number of peas. My daughter is in day camp so she is not keeping up with the ripening peas. I decided to pull most all of the beets realizing that I planted them too late and they were not going to get much bigger. Can you plant a fall crop of beets and should I be starting now? I picked a few more Sungold tomatoes and I can tell that they are going to be coming in fast and furious. Another Ichiban Eggplant and two cucumbers. And finally some peppers, basil and parsley.

All of this is quite impressive since on Monday there didn't seem to be anything to pick. If I continue like this every other day, I am going to need a few more kids and at the very least, a husband that is in town to consume it all.

But the real news is that, today, my 11 year old daughter made dinner which included a salad that was completely from the garden. This is not so unusual for July but it is June. Of course, depending on what you put in the salad, I could consider that I had one back in May when all my lettuce was coming in but I never have just a lettuce salad. So tonight's salad was a combination of: beets, cucumbers, onions, green beans, and parsley. I am not to sure if I am more tickled by a total garden salad or that my daughter made it. She ate it also.
The finished product!

    

On another note, there was a lot of butterfly, bee action in the garden today. Cone flowers and Cosmos in June!

  

Purple (and some pink, orange and red) Sunday

The purples are out.
Salvia, petunia, mexican iris, sage, lavender, baptista

peony, day lily, nasturtium, and ???