Yesterday I bailed from work before lunch because I wasn’t feeling well. At some point I knew I wasn’t going to be able to power through it and hope I’d feel better. I came home and spent a few hours watching tv, taking a nap, and slurping some soup. Around 3pm I walked outside for a few minutes to get some fresh air and to enjoy the sun; it was far too nice of a day to be cooped up inside as I had been. I grabbed my camera and decided to go for a walk around the garden for a few minutes. I was almost done and heading back…

These two pumpkins have been orange for several weeks now. I had done some reading about when to harvest pumpkins earlier this summer when I knew that the vines were setting fruit but I had to take a dive back into my reading to verify myself about the proper time to harvest. Being as this was my first experience successfully growing pumpkins, I wanted to be sure. So, I took Forest to the garden with me and we cut the pumpkins off the vines—me with my garden clippers, Forest with his Handy Manny saw. Now that I’ve had some pumpkin success, not without a scare from Harvey’s flood waters, I’m…

A view of the side yard garden from the front Stapelia gigantea Senna corymbosa Did it seem like September sped by with nary a time to take a breathe? It did for me. Harvey seemed to push us straight into September and the week+ off of work made it feel even more odd to start September. Chris was out of town for Forest’s birthday and Forest turned three and honestly, I’m not quite sure where the weeks went between that and Chris’ birthday which was just this last weekend. Lycoris radiata Gaillardia aestivalis var. winkleri Brugmansia The tug to do just a little bit less in the garden is great…

The lepidopteran show here at Tadpole Hollow is full swing. I thought I had a bunch of monarchs back in August but nope, the migration is really in full swing now. I have caterpillars and eggs out my ears and I’m doing my best to raise what I can though most are doing their own thing out there on the milkweed. Raising the monarchs are been educational and rewarding but also a little heartbreaking at times. Smaller caterpillars just up and disappear, probably chomped on by their larger counterparts because they don’t know any better, and I had my first case of OE that showed up in a chrysalis just…

We’re in a phase where I’m ready for the lull in the garden to end a bit, to have more of a haul every few days. Sure, we’re still picking peppers, and a bit of beans and okra here and there, but the abundance of late spring and early summer is gone. A few more weeks and we can think about sowing fall and winter crops. I have been gloriously excited about the Seminole pumpkin bed. Finally, we have fruit! There are at least five small pumpkins out there and one morning as I went out to try to help some pollination along by hand I noticed that the bumblebees…

One humid morning of July 22nd I had a few hours to myself as Chris took Forest to get a haircut and do a few errands. With a plethora of ways I could spend that time I opted to start working on weeding the flower garden path. I worked, head down, for the better part of an hour and a half and was making good progress. Taking a break to rest my neck from the strain of looking down, I happened to look up right at the moment a female monarch was visiting one of the milkweed patches. I watched her and sure enough her ovipositor was dotting the milkweed…

I kept thinking that at some point this summer I would be all “caught up” in the flower garden, enough to sit around for about three days to enjoy the look into a non-existent state of garden homeostasis and relish the garden for a few moments. But, I never got around to that for a variety of factors. The weeds stayed in the path–though the path got weeded in parts–but it never made it to fully being weeded; the deer continually barged through, digging around for roots or whatnot, ripping plants to pieces or pulling them out of the ground in the meantime; and while I managed to keep one…

The current lull between crops is actually very soothing for me. Sure, there’s weed pulling, supplemental watering, and something I’m trying to be better about—fertilizing with fish emulsion—but there’s not a lot of harvesting going on. Blackberries are completed, the beans stop producing when it gets too hot—if we get a light front come through with rain there’s always a new flush of fruit—and squash and pumpkins have yet to begin producing. There’s a lot of growth, though. With the Seminole pumpkin going gangbusters throughout an entire bed, two squash plants attempting to thrive, and new rounds of beans being grown, I’m happy with this later summer growth. In addition,…