Squash weather, too

Okay, it’s summer. I get it. It’s hot every day. And humid. And even when I think it’s not so bad, a short walk leaves me feeling like I’m stuck inside my own personal heat booth. The plants seem happy. More squash are flowering. I’m finding more female squash blossoms, with the little mini-me versions […]

Living on thin moss

Some sort of sunflower appears to have found just enough of a foothold in the moss on a stone wall. I’ve been wrong before about “sunflowers“, but it’s too high up for me to see anything but a yellow composite flower. It might as well be a sunflower. It even seems to like the heat!

Jupiter is a dot

I saw lots of neat stuff today, but you’ll have to take my word for it. First thing this morning, two goldfinches were feeding on the coneflowers, and the nyjer feeder, and the evening primrose. But I didn’t get a picture and you’ll have to take my word for it.

Eggplant Weather

It’s hot. It’s sticky. It’s hot. That’s what I’ll be thinking when I finally get to cook this eggplant.

Cicada

One of my favorite sounds of late summer is the buzz of cicadas. Even though I hear them singing to each other from tree to tree and across the street, I hardly ever get to see one. Usually the closest I get is a discarded skin. But this year, I stumbled on Lyric Cicada. Unfortunately, […]

Is fluffy cute?

Once it gets dark, the bird feeders become skunk feeders, or at least the worm-laden cruft of sunflower shells underneath. All too often, when I go out looking for my evil fluffy white cat, that bit of fluff in the bushes turns out to be a skunk. Even the cat gets confused. In one of […]

Boring, boring compost

The batch of compost I started last month is all cooked up and spread out. I actually emptied it last week, but I kept finding something else to post until I almost forgot about the compost. So maybe things are a little out of order, but the compost makes everything else possible.

And garlic, too

I see now that I dug up my first garlic way too early. It took another month for the other two garlic plants to mature. They finally lay down flat on the earth as if they just couldn’t take it any more. So I dug them up, and hey presto! A whole head of garlic. […]

Tomato Onslaught

After hearing so much about late blight in tomatoes and potatoes, I feel like I got away with something. I mean I planted a tomato plant in the same spot three years in a row. It’s even been the same variety the last two years, Early Girl. In order to thoroughly tempt fate, I also […]

Catmint for bees

The promised thunderstorms finally paid off. The cat even came inside and curled up by the window listening to the cooling rain. Just this afternoon, he was sitting in the middle of the catmint, noshing away, while bumblebees buzzed around him. Like these: