Mystery fruitlet

Okay, a mystery female flower has appeared. With these squashlike flowers, the females have a mini fruit underneath, shaped like the fruit to come. This narrows things down a bit. Round and smooth. Hmmm. Some kind of melon, maybe? I tried planting Sugar Baby watermelons earlier, but that was last year. And the mystery plants […]

Raspberries are back

The fall crop of raspberries is coming in. Maybe if the sun comes out, I can pick berries again.

Fall showers fill the mystery flowers

Just what we need — more rain! It’s so wet the blossoms on the mystery plant are full of water.

Come see my bees

Every year in Watertown, we have a Life-Friendly Garden Tour, in which gardeners who don’t use chemicals in their yards open their gardens for you to see. This year, I finally signed up to be a part of it. After all, not using chemicals is pretty important if you want to give the bees a […]

Mystery flower greets the sun

The first of the mystery plants greeted the morning with a bright yellow flower. A male flower. When the female flowers appear, they’ll have mini-proto-fruits at the bottom, and we’ll finally have the best clue as to what the mystery plants are.

Cicadas are heard more than seen

I hear cicadas buzzing every warm day, but hardly ever see them. The closest I get is their discarded shells, on the ground, on a branch, on a wall. They live as larvae in the ground, growing to fat nymphs, and when they mature, they crawl up and shed their old selves.

Fresh as a wind-picked pear

Did you know storms can pick fresh fruit? It’s true. All you have to do is wrap netting around the tree to catch it. Irene was kind enough to knock this one loose. So that’s one pear harvested successfully, two to go.

The butterflies after the storm

There’s nothing quite like the clear weather that comes after a good storm. The sky seems extra blue, urging you to look up. That’s how I saw a kettle of hawks migrating this morning. Five or six hawks were wheeling around each other, steadily moving in a southerly direction. The bees were back to business […]

Storm has been duly weathered

The tomato plant has a couple broken branches, but that’s about it. Someone’s broken tree branch came aground on the sidewalk in front of the house, but I have no idea where it came from. Mostly we spent the day pretty much the way these sparrows did: hunkering down in a safe place and chittering […]

Might be a good time to plant fall vegetables

Late summer, July, August, is about when I start thinking it’s a good time to plant some fall crops. There’s a whole list from broccoli to carrots that are supposed to grow quickly in the warmth and rain, which lets you get another harvest in. But I never look at the list any more. I […]